Garrett Lierman
Entertainment editor
Dark Souls 3: 9/10
If normal medieval sword fighting games are equivalent to fighting a dog or another person, then Dark Souls 3 is fighting Brock Lesnar with both your hands tied behind your back. While impossibly difficult, this game boasts a wonderful color pallet, functional mechanics, a marvelous score, and a story that’s about as easy to decipher as a 15 sided rubik’s cube.
The story is logical at it’s beginning, you’re an undead soul hunting those who have wronged you, but it quickly takes a turn to the weird and confusing, eventually becoming entirely impossible to understand fully. Despite all of this, there is still a driving force in the game, a sense of accomplishment. Dark Souls has always boasted an incredibly unforgiving and harsh level of difficulty. I actually never finished the game as I could only play it for an hour or so at a time before I became either too frustrated or mentally fatigued to continue without consuming ungodly amounts of caffeine.
While the frustrating difficulty makes the game incredibly difficult to finish within months of buying it. It also provides an incredible sense of accomplishment when you overcome even the smallest of challenges. I can’t even count the times I caught myself yelling, “Ha! I beat you, game! I’m the strongest thing alive!” Obviously these celebrations were almost always met with an almost immediate annihilation by an unseen threat.
The textures of the game are on par with the standards of modern gaming but the effects are dazzling. Fire, something the game is essentially based around, looks stunning and awe inspiring. Shadows are dark and looming, and every successful hit is rewarded with a dark and anatomically correct splatter of gore. The colors of the game are almost entirely neutral, making proper color look inspiring. Shadows loom almost constantly and the ground is a dull grey/brown. Whenever I stumbled across any ray of light or color it filled me with determination to press on. The musical score is easily the best mark of this game. Some of the engagements feel downright earth shattering due to the rolling score and dramatic tension created by it. At one point in the game the player has to fight an actually living tree, and it’s simply incredible because of the sheer tension that the music sets up.
Character design in the game is varied but equivalently gruesome. Some of the secondary and tertiary characters simply make you feel sorry for them as they are clearly in a great deal of pain and suffering. Luckily, the game’s mechanics allow you to swiftly put these characters out of their misery provided you have the skill to do so. Weapons clash well, invisible walls are not present, and enemies don’t glitch around, making for a pretty solid game mechanically.
Overall Dark Souls 3 is an incredibly interesting experience with a magnificent score that flows wonderfully, a beautiful color pallet that focuses on color and the lack thereof, working mechanics, albeit with a confusing story.
Dishonored 2: 7/10
Dishonored 2 can be a hack and slash shoot ‘em up or a stealth-based spy game depending on how you play. Or, according to the game itself, whether you’re a good person or not.
I hate to come out swinging but this game presents you with the choice to be the notorious killer you were in the previous game or the royal spymaster of this one, but almost immediately reprimands you against the former of the two.
I personally prefer the fast-paced visceral action of a brawl, which the game can provide in spades, but around the 20 to 30 minute mark for my first playthrough, one of the most influential characters of the game basically calls you a monster if you choose this approach. This lead to me ultimately having a much longer, and more dreadful playthrough as I struggled to keep the urge to use this game’s glorious combat system to it’s fullest under control. The game promises a more optimistic ending if you take this approach, an ending that I ultimately found unsatisfying and angering.
I played my second time through the game violently and found it to be a somewhat psychopathic, yet joyous blitz through the story and game. My murder run took me around 7 hours total over the course of about a day and a half. However my quiet run was a feet-dragging, difficult slog through a world that is far less interesting than that of the first game. The length of that playthrough was a whopping 14 and half hours over the course of at least four to five days.
The game looks nice but there are several moments when textures pop in or downright don’t load properly although these distractions are minor. The actual game mechanics work properly for the most part with only the occasional error. The most notable of which was when I tried to choke out a guard through a window, and instead of the window breaking and alerting the guard, he just went through the solid glass without a sound or care in the world.
The characters are interesting and story is certainly unique, focusing more on the occult aspect of the game than its predecessor. Most of the characters and their henchmen are developed through the world, notes, books you can find around the playable area.
Overall, Dishonored 2 is a solid game with some minor graphical issues, but a well written story with absolutely brutal action.
Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst 6.5/10
Mirror’s Edge is a game set in the near future, where evil corporations control all the media, advertisements, and even strive for the ever-present cliche of attempting to control the minds of the citizens of their city. You play as Faith, a parkour extraordinaire and delivery girl.
The game begins with Faith being released from a juvenile detention center, where you have been incarcerated for the past several years. You meet up with your super edgy rebel friends from years long past. The design of these characters is hipsters’ idea of an anti-establishment group. They’re decked out in sleeveless hoodies, leather jackets, and fingerless gloves.
The story is one large cliche of “the establishment doesn’t want creativity to exist so we’re gonna break a lot of stuff and that’ll show them.”
For a something focused around parkour and momentum in general, the layout of the game is easy to both get lost and confused in. Whereas the first game of the series was a closed level system, this installment is an open world romp with variety and verticality. This freedom and variety allows for a free-flowing, creative experience; however, it also opens opportunities for wrong turns, mistakes, confusing directions, and other conundrums that can lead to failure or irritation. I can recount multiple times when I would be blitzing my way to the next mission, running along rooftops, only to have it grind to a halt as I have to open my map just to find out that I missed my turn five minutes ago and I’m stranded without it.
Graphically, the game is pretty, but unimpressive. The textures are excellent, providing a nice view every time you stop, willingly or not.
Overall, Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst is a fun romp around an interesting and beautiful landscape that’s simply plagued by confusing level design, poorly written characters and story, and heavy-handed millenial deestablismentarinistic themes.