Aloy and Horsebirbs

Aloy and Horsebirbs

We live in trying times… and what I mean by that is right now there are entirely too damned many great games coming out in a very short period of time.  I was already woefully behind in my progress in literally everything, and when compounded by the fact that I am apparently bingeing the hell out of Final Fantasy XIV you end up with a lot of stuff simply not getting accomplished.  For example… this month the AggroChat game of the month is Final Fantasy XV.  It is in fact MY pick…  but I have been high center in the game for a long time and last night I attempted to fix that.  I kept telling myself that I would only do the main story quest, and that lasted for a little while but not long.  Firstly I wound up bumping into a bunch of ridiculously higher level mobs on the way to my next quest objective.  One of which was freaking Midgardsormr…  just hanging out chilling on the river bank.  When I made a tactical retreat and pushed forward into the cave…  I found that pretty much the mobs inside were also going to kick my ass.  So that means I have hit the wall that my gear and level seems to be able to get me to…  so as the evening went on my purpose seemed to disintegrate and I was once again wandering aimlessly and doing all of the side quests in a vague attempt to catch up level wise.

Aloy and Horsebirbs

Ultimately I am suffering from the exact same problem that I had when we were doing Fallout 4 as a game of the month.  For many of the folks in our podcast…  winning the game is the goal and seeing the story to its conclusion.  For me that really isn’t a thing… and instead I like doing all of the little objectives and inhabiting the world, participating in it.  So in many ways moving the story forward…  defeats that purpose because I keeps moving me past things that I kinda want to get out and roam around and explore.  When it comes to trying to push a game like this…  it ends up making me miserable.  Ultimately I am not going to be even closed to the end of the game when we record the podcast this weekend, and largely I think I am going to be okay with it.  Final Fantasy XV is still one of my favorite games from last night, and I really don’t much care about story spoilers in the first place.  That was never why I was playing the game, and never why it clicked with me.  It clicked because it was finally a Final Fantasy game that embraced my desire to roam around and get off the beaten path…  and then actually rewarded me for doing so.  Now I wish I had been playing the game all of this time, because last night I really enjoyed myself.  However I end up getting caught up in wanting to be around actual living breathing people… and for me that means MMOs.  Getting bit by the Final Fantasy XIV bug hasn’t helped lately either in my push to get everything to 50.  However this is still a game that I am enjoying moving through, albeit slowly.

Aloy and Horsebirbs

The game that is going to be the death of me right now however is Horizon Zero Dawn.  During the mishap with my account and a bunch of others getting compromised on PSN, I ended up getting $50 funded to my Playstation wallet.  They were unable or unwilling to reverse the charges on my credit card, so I had this pot of cash that was sitting there needing to be spent on something.  As a result I ended up pre-ordering Horizon and when I checked my PS4 yesterday morning it had already installed and was simply waiting on the magic moment to launch.  This is going to fall down into the “bel knows better” category… but by now I should have learned not to attempt to play a game at 11pm central when things generally officially launch for me.  However I did this thing… and as a result I wound up getting to bed significantly later than I would have liked.  Also as a result I am groggy as hell sitting down this morning to write this blog post.  That said I need you to marvel at how adorable babby Aloy is…  and that you end up playing as her for a bit and not just through a sequence of cut scenes.  I’ve barely scratched the surface and not even really made it through the tutorial section… and this game already has me hooked in both game play and its world.

Aloy and Horsebirbs

Admittedly this game did not really have to try terribly hard to hook me given its theme.  Awesome bow lady that fights zoids for fun and profit.  What I didn’t expect was just how damned good the controls feel and how responsive combat actually ends up being.  Things have happened already in the story line that I did not expect to happen… and I am super intrigued as to how they end up playing out in the long run.  I don’t want to get too much into my thoughts about story events, because literally the game just unlocked last night and I don’t want to spoil anything really.  What I do find interesting is that so far this game has confirmed my theory about something.  Several years ago I would have told you that I simply did not enjoy playing female characters in games.  I now know that is completely wrong… and I do absolutely enjoy female characters so long as they are the equivalent of the sort of male characters I enjoy.  I like warriors…  I like playing badasses that are armed to the teeth and more importantly armored.  Over the last few years there have been a long list of characters that I have really enjoyed from the modern reboot of Lara Croft, to Zarya in Overwatch, to Sonya in Heroes of the Storm.  Aloy is just another in a long line of these characters that I enjoy playing, and apparently it was never a gender thing…  and just a warrior thing.  I will be anxiously watching the clock today at work, so I can get home and play some more Horizon and see where the game takes me.  I know that Tam stayed up late last night to go ahead and start playing, and he seems to be enjoying it as well.

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