I actually purchased Detroit, a relatively new PS4 game, for my son Christopher, who enjoys console RPGs. He told me later that he wasn't going to be able to get to playing it for a while, and thus I was welcome to try it as long as I didn't spoiler him too much. I'm glad I did. Detroit: Become Human is a game from Quantic Dream which features one of the central questions of many SF universes (including my own Arenaverse): can artificial intelligences be considered people? How and when do we make that decision? And what do we do what we are [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Horizon Zero Dawn
April 24, 2018 By Leave a Comment
I was reluctant to try this one at first, because much of the material I saw made this look like the kind of action RPG that I generally fail miserably at. But after multiple people told me to give it a try, I did. And that was a really good decision. Horizon Zero Dawn follows the story of Aloy, a young woman who is just coming of age as the main story begins. The initial tutorial section of the game takes you through important events in Aloy's childhood, including her experiences finding out that she and her adoptive father Rost are [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Ready Player One
April 19, 2018 By Leave a Comment
I'd heard of this book (by Earnest Cline) off and on for years, but seeing a movie released caused me to actually pick it up and read it. Wade Watts, AKA Parzival, lives in the culmination, or perhaps nadir, of development of the trailer park – the "stacks", where trailers have been literally stacked to heights of twenty or more, sheltering the desperate and displaced in a world where a combination of climate change and energy depletion has caused the collapse of American society and most of the rest of the world. It is a dystopian, [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Persona 5
June 27, 2017 By Leave a Comment
"We will definitely take your heart!" The Persona series of JRPGs, the most successful component of the Shin Megami Tensei franchise, is simultaneously unique in its approach, and at the same time something of a perfect distillation of what makes console JRPGs work. I have previously reviewed Persona 3 and Persona 4, as well as Persona 4 Arena, a fighting game spinoff of 4 which had startlingly deep story and character elements. Those prior experiences set a terribly high bar for the sequel to clear. It succeeded. Like its [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Dragonball Xenoverse
April 25, 2017 By Leave a Comment
I've been a fan of Dragonball for… Holy sheep, over 26 years now. The intensity of my fandom has varied, and I am very far from blind to the various flaws of the series, but it's such a very fun over-the-top series in many ways – and its newest incarnation on TV, Dragonball Super, has done a lot of work to address some of the prior installments' flaws. Because of this, and because I realized I only had one fighting game for the PS4 in the house, I decided to check out what the Dragonball franchise's fighting games were like now. [ Continue reading... ]
Just For Fun: Tabletop RPGs – Game Balance OR World Trumps Rules
January 31, 2017 By Leave a Comment
I've been a roleplaying gamer since 1977, when I first encountered Dungeons and Dragons – unless you count the venerable game of "let's pretend", which I was playing from the time I was 4 or 5, and even had some rules for to minimize the arguments. I discussed my initial encounter with commercial RPGs, and the influence it had on my life, in this prior entry: http://grandcentralarena.com/under-the-influence-roleplaying-games-rpgs/ In this entry, though, I want to talk about running RPGs and how I view this extremely challenging hobbyist [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Grand Theft Auto 5 (a partial review)
January 24, 2017 By Leave a Comment
I was given this game for Christmas (2016) and I suspect that was partially intended as a joke. Nonetheless, I did install and play the game to an extent. This will be a "partial" review because it's extremely unlikely I'll ever play the whole game through, mainly because its basic premise doesn't appeal. Of the two characters I've unlocked and played a bit of so far, one is a basically decent, but apparently kinda weak-willed, young man named Franklin – he seems to know that a lot of the things his friends/acquaintances get up to are Just [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Dragon Age: Inquisition
September 15, 2016 By Leave a Comment
As my prior reviews of Dragon Age and Dragon Age II made clear, those were impressively good games with excellent characterization, good gameplay, and a deep and engaging plot. A third game had an incredibly high standard to live up to. Instead, the first and second games now have a problem of living up to the third. The game starts with a column of warriors – presumably Templars – marching on one side, a column of mages on the other, heading for a massive keep in the distance. Starting the game… causes the tower to explode. You begin [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves (well, Phone): Pokémon Go
September 6, 2016 By Leave a Comment
I was never a big Pokémon fan. I never played any of the games, and I'd seen just enough episodes of the anime (plus the first movie) to be familiar with the basic concept and main characters. So when Pokémon Go was rolled out, at first I didn't have much interest… … except there were so many people on my list playing it. I figured I might as well give it a try, the way I had MMORPGs like WoW, just so that I'd know what it was. To my astonishment, I rather like the game. Collecting various strange (virtual) animals, trying to level them [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: No Man’s Sky, First Impressions
September 1, 2016 By 2 Comments
No Man's Sky is a highly ambitious and unique game, whose particular claim to fame is a titanically huge universe – quintillions of planets to explore, generated procedurally in a manner that ensures that every planet will be different and that individual players will be discovering things unique to their own personal interaction with the game. I have something of an advantage in approaching the game for review: I heard very little other than this about the game, and so I had relatively little preconception about it. My expectations were [ Continue reading... ]
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