The biggest sensation of 2015, Star Wars – Force Awakens was easily the most anticipated movie of the last few years. A lot of expectation was put into it. It was the revival of a beloved franchise, and the first movie under the Disney umbrella. The direction was under the experienced JJ Abrams, famous for the Lost TV show and the Star Trek film reboot. There are not much people in the world that can claim to have worked in these both famous Sci-Fi universes.
It starts from the ashes of the old Galactic Empire; the First Order rises. Kinda lame, because it is essentially the same enemy, with the same military structure. Just a re-branding. In fact, if you start to think more deeply, the film tries so much to be a continuation of the universe, that it borrows several elements from other movies. The deja vù sensation is very present throughout the whole time. It is not bad or good by definition, but it makes me think about the artificial nature of the script: it was done to be a commercial success, at all costs.
I liked very much the new characters, heroes and villains. Most are well-defined. Their motivations are clear, and their actions make sense. They are also mostly funny. It believes that Disney notice that the most beloved characters from the original movies were those that have a sense of humor, like Han Solo and Chewbacca, or R2-D2. Now almost all, even in dire straits, have fun of the danger. One noticeable exception is the main villain, Kylo Ren. The internal is so strong that makes the audience believe that he is not actually any powerful as it tries to imply.
My main overall criticism is that the movie is very focused on the characters and the intrinsic relationships among them, forgetting the major conflict (not going to tell about specifics, for the sake of spoiling the fun). All the problems that are not personal-related is solved in a so easy fashion that removed the credibility. The villains are so incompetent the heroes surpass them all the time, with no relevant drawback. At the end, it seems that everything was a minor headache episode.
Nostalgic and fun. Total recommendation. Sorry to say, but it is already a far better experience than Lucas’ second trilogy. Star Wars is stronger than ever.
Like almost everybody else, I was not expecting this game being this good. From the makers of the fun but niche FPS Serious Sam, Croteam, a puzzle game this deep have to catch everybody by surprise.
The game is a series of 3D puzzles. You control a character using the ordinary 3D FPS control scheme. Nothing fancy. But there is no combat. None. Some puzzles require some action, like running an synchronizing with other moving elements, like elevators.
The difficulty rate is really nice. At the beginning you face easy puzzles. Eventually one is harder, to keep you interested. Then a new tools or functionality is presented. And the cycle repeats, now mixing the usage of the tools in the levels.
The visuals are super clean but yet super nice. It allowed me to play in my notebook with any reservations. The whole universe feels right. The UI is super minimalistic.
The story is presented through an inside or head voice, in a God-speaking to you kinda way and through computers and holograms. Most of them does not clarify anything, but just expose someone’s opinions and points of view. It is up to you, the player, to figure out what the hack is going on. And it is deliberated dual, in the way that there is no one truth to the story. Every player will experience it in a personal way. The whole presentation is a follows the introspective and philosophical themes.
The game is a blast. I struggled in some puzzles but most of them are doable. Some extras are given for those that keep the super hard out-of-the-box puzzles. I saw the solution of some of them on the internet, and my mind exploded. They were super bizarre. I felt that just finishing the game and doing one or other extra puzzle would suffice. But I enjoyed every moment.
And also, I saved the game just before the final moment because I wanted to experience the multiple endings of the game.
Spoiler alert: It is now my favorite game of all time. Period.
I played The Witcher couple of years ago, after reading an interesting review saying that it was one of the best RPGs ever made. The review also alerted that the game suffered deeply from bad translation and bugs when first came to english markets. The second edition, called Enhanced Edition, fixed most of these issues and indeed enhanced some aspects of the game. When I played, I had to agree that the game and the universe were fantastic. I loved the idea of playing with an anti-hero.
The Witcher 2 came and I also loved it. It departed from the Aurora Engine (used in Obsidian’s classic RPGs like Neverwinter Nights) to a home made. The art direction took an overhaul and started to show the real vision. The general gameplay also transitioned to a more action oriented, with a third person over-the-shoulder camera style.
The Witcher 3 was announced and I had to confess that I was a bit worried about the open-world nature. The Witcher main strength, as a series, was the strong story telling. Open-world games tend to have a loose and light story. See Bethesda’s Elder Scroll and RockStar’s GTA series.
The closer to the release, the more excited I was getting. It was one of the very few titles that I have ever pre-ordered.
And it delivered!
Since from the very start, the game shows that it has a fantastic story driven gameplay and strong action mechanics. Since from the very start, it will keep your mouth and eyes opened. It is how I stayed for hours of playing. There are 3 pillars that make this game so awesome:
Story
The most surprising good feature is the story elements. As I said before, open-world games tend to be a bit light in order to accommodate a generic and open nature of the game. They generally just introduce the gameplay elements. But in Wild Hunt, the main story have a purpose, a true life. The plot is complex and it raises in tension each step.
But what surprised me most is the richness of the side quests. They did not fall into the trap of creating a bunch of generic side quests, like most Assassin’s Creed or Borderlands, or even Skyrim, with several missions that are purely kill a target or get an item. They are more elaborate, with an introduction of context on each of them, multistepped and often with resolution with a moral dilemma. Combat and violence is not always the way of resolving things. In summary, they put a lot of effort on creating all of them, avoiding the generic content-fill approach.
The characters seems deep and believable. They have different motivations: some are greedy, some are brutal, some are kind, some are funny. Geralt cannot be defined as good or evil. He is more complex. You can save one beautiful lady by letting dozens die. You can take part of a monster that is counter attacking humans that are invading its territory. You can date some different girls, but notice that for every decision, there are consequences. You will never face a “right” decision.
Gameplay
They listened to the players from previous games and they changed and tweaked The Witcher formula while maintaining the series main concepts. Alchemy is proved to be useful, magic and combat are complementary. The players are constantly forced to change styles and mastering all the techniques. It creates variable combats and protects the players from being a mere button presser, with monotonous single style of play.
The map traversal is fun and interesting. The land is filled with monsters and mysterious characters. Beautiful landscapes. Detailed cities. Do yourself a favor and avoid the main roads and explore the map. The horse Roach is useful and fun. Fast travel is done nicely (altought I hate where the Crow’s Perch).
The developers got almost all the design choices right. All the information is presented clearly and most of the boring aspects, like loot and inventory administration, streamlined.
Graphics
The third element that hooked me also stunned almost everyone in the world: the graphical presentation is absolutely the best. Skyrim did quite a splash when it came out, but it is nothing, nothing compared to The Witcher. They extracted the most of the technology to bring a very detailed and brilliant world even imagined.
They animated EVERY dialog. All the set pieces are cinema like, with moving, talking, gesticulating and vivid characters. For sure they invented some animation editor to allow to procedurally change camera angles and some gestures, but man, it works really well.
The cities are huge. It takes quite a time to cross one city. One of many. The terrain is so beautiful that they put some situations in the story that the main character itself stops and take a moment watching the view.
In the sound department, all the dialogues are voiced, in an enormous production challenge.
Bonus: Customer friendly
Unlike most of today’s businessmen in these industry, the guys from CD Prokect really mean customers-first. They proved in the past, creating the Good Old Game (not only GOG.com) with no DRM, and they proved this time. The game was fixed and really enhanced patch after patch, mostly due to the players feedback. They are for me the ultimate inspiration for business management for an digital company. It should definitively an inspiration for Konami or EA heads.
My final thoughts are quite simple: it took me months to complete the 130+ hours of the main campaign. I was delaying it on purpose, fearing it would end. I liked so much that I could say that it is probably my favorite game of all time.
Fuzzy Nation is a great story about fighting for what is right and getting personal revenge along the way. Scalzi created a very funny story about an underdog fighting against all odds and powerful enemies.
Jack Holloway is an anti-hero. You can think of him as Han Solo working as a lawyer. He is a former lawyer that was expelled from the job for a not-that-clear fact, losing a very important case on purpose, it seemed. He became then a geologist freelancer on a very distant planet, scanning underground for mineral richness. On the way, he discovered a very different thing. And it puts him in a position to work back as a lawyer, fighting against the former employer, that is no short of money and resources.
Holloway is clever. But this is one of the main complaints I had. Holloway is so clever that you cannot follow what he is thinking. It is, in fact, intentional. The book hides inner thoughts of Holloway to deliver some surprising turns in the story. But sometimes it makes you feel like a mere passenger.
Despite any complaints, it is a solid title. I loved reading it and recommend it. I would not be surprised if it gets a movie adaptation eventually.
The Martian is often described as Cast Away in space. I agree. It presents the incredible task of surviving, alone, on Mars. Just like Tom Hanks surviving on the island.
But improvising life on Mars is several degrees more complex than on that island. This is why the main character in The Martian has to be a very, very very smart guy, a little too MacGyver to be honest. Imagine Apollo 13, the movie, when NASA focuses on converting ship scraps into an oxygen filter, but for the entire duration of the movie, it was done mostly by one guy.
80% of the book, Mark Watney is in dire straights. Always facing high odds of dying. This is why the book is so compelling. It sucks your soul, making you wonder at night “how he can pull this off now?”. Watney must have a clear state of mind all the time. I understand that it would not make any sense to write a book about a normal guy that gets lost on Mars and dies after the first disaster. But Watney is too much the perfect guy to be lost in spaceace.
The book sometimes abuses the technical description of the solution. It could be shorter by a bit. However, and this is not a small achievement, there are at least 2 moments when I was crying due to the narration and climax feeling.
It will become a movie directed by Ridley Scott and started by Matt Damon. I will see the movie for sure.
