Mass Effect 3: Skyrim Edition
-er, ahem, I mean-
Dragon Age Inquisition
I love long, open-world, RPGs. Inquisition is certainly the most open-world of the Dragon Age games. I didn't care for the leveling system, but I haven't cared for any of the leveling systems in the series, probably because I don't particularly care for the combat. Despite my love undying love for Knights of the Old Republic, the "realtime turn-based(?") combat is rather off-putting for me in the Dragon Age franchise. I get none of the satisfaction of realtime combat and none of whatever I feel when I do turn-based combat in games like Pokémon or XCOM. But perhaps that's because I never feel like I'm accomplishing anything in combat. The enemies all scale with the player in such a way where I rarely, if ever, get a one-hit kill with my archer, despite her doing the most damage per hit of any party member. In fact, combat is mostly tedious and boring, especially if you're fighting a dragon. It all just a bunch of particle generators buzzing around while you watch numbers fly everywhere on the screen.
I liked the open world aspect. It was cool exploring such large environments, and there were some fun hidden Easter eggs in proper Bioware fashion. However, if I'm going to pour days or even weeks (months) into exploring every corner of the globe, completing every side quest, and collecting every collectable, I'd like it to mean a damn. The story was decent, but I felt like nothing I did affected any of the story's outcome. So, despite being a massive open world, I felt incredibly railroaded. I even completed all the operations where you send your NPC helpers out to do missions for you; I completed everyone of them, hoping (fool that I am) that it would somehow benefit me when I went to fight the final boss. I thought, Surely it's not like Mass Effect 3. Surely my actions mean something and will prevent soldiers from dying in the final assault or side characters will survive, or the final boss will be weaker. Ah, but no. And here's where things get even more disappointing.
The final boss fight, the thing we've built up to this whole game, the thing you spent weeks or months preparing for, is exactly that. Just a boss fight. There is no final assault on Corypheus' stronghold. No series of gates to get through, no puzzles to figure out, no waves of enemies. In fact, you don't have to go anywhere; when you trigger the end game, Corypheus literally comes to you. You and your current party fight him, and that's it. It's incredibly easy to; far easier than any of the dragons. I beat him on my second try; might have done it on my first try, but he used a knock-back attack that hit me so hard I was thrown all the way back to the Xbox home screen, because it crashed my game.
Adding to the pile of things that made me feel like I didn't mean anything was the dialogue wheel. Maybe it's my own fault for making my character have arched eyebrows so her face was in a humorously constant state of surprise, maybe it was the voice acting, but I really missed the "sarcastic" options from Dragon Age II. But, then again, even if you "import" a Dragon Age II game into your profile when playing Inquisition, the game still pretends Hawke is this bearded man who made all the decisions you didn't in DA2, so maybe Bioware wants to pretend none of DA2 ever happened.
It was really a strange experience, because, throughout the game, I found myself saying, "This is awesome. I'm really enjoying this," but, when it was all over, I walked away with a sense of disappointment and that I might have wasted my time. But I do have some good memories, right? Am I still talking about Dragon Age or my past relationships now?
In the end, like all the other entries in the franchise Dragon Age Inquisition is fun, but ultimately I feel I could have a better time just replaying some Mass Effect.
- Is it fun? Yes
- Would I play it again? Probably not
- Is it worth $60? Yes
Halo 5 Guardians
Now, for all its faults and the disappointment I felt with Dragon Age Inquisition, at least it was long, fun, and I felt like I got my $60 worth. Then there's Halo 5 Guardians. Long story short, Halo 5 follows the Halo 2 game design approach of putting a lot of effort into creating a fun (I assume) multi-player experience and half-asssing the campaign mode saying, "Er. . . We'll finish it in the next one." Now, I'd be fine with this, if they only charged me half the price. Especially since a lot of what would be the most fun moments of gameplay are reserved for the characters to do outside of your control during cutscenes.
One sentence review: I suppose it's still a little better than Halo: Reach.
Fallout 4
If I had to give a Game of the Year award, it would probably go to Fallout 4. However, it should be noted I don't play a ton of "new" games each year, so those accolades carry little meaning coming from me. However, I really like Fallout 4. However, I also like just about any Bethesda title, so grains of salt, people.
Screw people who complained about it's graphics, I think it's pretty. The first few hours (let's be honest, days) spent wandering the wasteland, discovering new places and people, and tinkering with your guns and settlements is incredibly fun in that sense of exploration and discovery sort of way. However, as I got further into the plot and discovered more and more places on the map, I began to get the sinking feeling that the game is actually really lacking in a Bethesda staple: side quests! Oh there are a bunch (but all those infinitely looping defend settlement, acquire artifact, etc faction quests don't count). My favorite moment in the game came from a side quest. I just don't feel like the wastes were filled with as many weird stories and side missions as they were in Fallout 3 or New Vegas. Maybe the DLC will help; of course I bought the season pass already, because Bethesda DLC is always awesome (except Horse Armor).
Disclaimer though: I still haven't finished. I'm a completionist gamer, so I've been putting off any quests that feel like the could lead to end game or result in me pissing off a faction. I'm especially paranoid after Fallout New Vegas turned out not to be infinite. But now, I'm in a rut where I've run out of real side quests. So hopefully today I'll force myself to do the dreaded main quest.
