A Review of the Majora's Mask 3DS Remake, and Why Majora's Mask is My Favorite Zelda Game

Majora's Mask is a bit of a black sheep in the Legend of Zelda series; some absolutely love it, while others find it too cumbersome and weird to enjoy. As a direct sequel to Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask reuses the same engine and similar gameplay elements while recycling a ton of graphical and mechanical assets from OOT, but places them all in a new world, Termina, with a central gimmick of having a three day time limit constantly ticking in the background as you work to save the world from total destruction while the moon slowly falls on a collision course towards Termina. A bit like the Harold Ramis and Bill Murray film Groundhog Day, all of Termina's NPCs follow the same scripted schedule over those three days, and you have the power to reset time to the beginning of the cycle to do things differently and change people's lives, if only temporarily, until the next reset.

With a fairly dark, depressing atmosphere, a story that has nothing to do with the usual Zelda, Ganon, and Hyrule motifs, and more demanding, sometimes obtuse gameplay, it's no surprise that Majora's Mask isn't universally loved. It's a pretty weird game, after all, and I can totally understand it not being everyone's cup of tea, but it's those uniquely weird idiosyncrasies that make it my favorite Zelda game. It is a bit of an acquired taste, though; I actually didn't like it much at first, because it felt like too much of a weird departure from Ocarina of Time, a game with which I was fanatically obsessed at the time. But over time I came to appreciate its differences, and realized that it's actually better than even the more modern Zelda games in a lot of ways. As I was playing Breath of the Wild, for instance, I couldn't help but occasionally wish I were playing Majora's Mask, instead.

With the N64 quickly becoming more and more obsolete, the Majora's Mask 3DS remake aims to bring Majora's Mask to a new audience on a platform that is both readily available and also playable, while also improving the original game's accessibility with a bunch of quality of life improvements that make it not only easier to play, but also easier to understand. I was inclined at first to say that the 3DS remake is now the definitive way to play Majora's Mask due to the superior graphical quality, technical performance, and user interface, but unfortunately Nintendo also decided to make some radical changes to things like overall difficulty, boss fights, and transformation masks, which leaves me more conflicted about whether I'd actually recommend Majora's Mask 3DS to first time players.

The Surge: A Surprisingly Good Dark Souls Clone

The term "souls-like" is starting to catch on as a genre-defining label for games that recreate or otherwise emulate aspects of the Dark Souls games. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be much agreement as to what characteristics should qualify a game as souls-like; is it tough difficulty, harsh penalties for dying, strong emphasis on rewarding player skill, a dark and oppressing atmosphere, vague and obtuse storytelling, or still other qualities? The type of games that get described by people as "souls-like" vary wildly from side-scrolling brawlers to top-down boss rush games to first-person horror games to turn-based dungeon crawlers, all of which would seem to have more in common with other, more-established genres than Dark Souls. As much as I like Dark Souls, I find the "souls-like" label to be generally unhelpful in determining whether I'll like a game because so many "souls-like" games seem to be more dissimilar than similar to Dark Souls.

The Surge (2017) is about as close to Dark Souls as you can get without actually being Dark Souls. The similarities are so on-the-nose that I wouldn't even describe it as "souls-like" -- rather, I'd simply call it a Dark Souls clone, if you lifted pretty much everything about Dark Souls and dropped it into an industrial sci-fi setting. Developed by Deck13, who were also responsible for Lords of the Fallen (another Dark Souls clone), The Surge is a third-person action-RPG whose main gameplay loop consists of exploring complexly inter-woven levels and fighting enemies to make your way to the level's boss, collecting tech scrap from defeated enemies along the way so that you can increase your character's level and therefore his stats and abilities. Combat is the main draw, here, and it uses a pretty weighty system with a variety of attacks and dodge maneuvers, all based around a stamina meter that you have to manage while reading enemy attack patterns.

Dark Souls has been one of the most influential games of the past decade, and with FromSoftware declaring in 2016 that Dark Souls 3 would be the end of the Souls series, it pleases me to see other developers trying to recreate the magic of those games. As much as I love Dark Souls, those games can get to feel kind of repetitive between iterations, so having someone else approach the Dark Souls formula with fresh eyes and a fresh coat of paint is a good thing to me. There's certainly a risk that such an attempt would end up feeling merely like a lame impersonation of the real thing, and some may deride it as being purely derivative of other, perhaps better games, but I can fortunately say that The Surge is actually surprisingly good. Some rough edges here and there suggest Deck13 doesn't have quite the mastery of the system as FromSoftware does, but it actually improves on the Dark Souls formula in some key ways, and I feel like it's a good enough experience to stand on its own, despite the obvious connection to Dark Souls.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild -- Better Than Expected, But Still Overrated

Breath of the Wild took the world by storm last year, with many people proclaiming it to be not only the best game of the year, but also the best Zelda game of all time and the best open-world game ever made. Those are some pretty lofty claims, so naturally I was skeptical that it would actually live up to that kind of hype. I've played a fair number of open-world games, after all, and while I generally enjoy the genre, they're difficult to pull off well and usually leave me feeling unsatisfied. Meanwhile, there's only been one Zelda game in the last 15 years that I've actually enjoyed (that being A Link Between Worlds, mostly because of its classic non-linear design and it being an homage to A Link to the Past), so I didn't exactly have confidence that Nintendo would hit such a home run with a new Zelda. Even watching streams and gameplay footage, it all looked kind of boring to me. Still, when the opportunity presented itself to borrow a coworker's Switch for a few weeks (thank you Dom), I couldn't pass on the chance to play it and see for myself.

I'm pleased to say that Breath of the Wild is indeed one of the best Zelda games that I've played in a long time. Although it deviates from the typical "Zelda formula" we've grown accustomed to lately, the open-world exploration feels reminiscent of older games in the series (specifically the original Legend of Zelda, and to a lesser extent A Link to the Past), but on a much bigger and more sophisticated scale. It's also one of the better open-world games to have come out recently, with a world that feels mysteriously intriguing and therefore genuinely interesting to explore; other open-world designers could learn a few lessons from Nintendo. I certainly enjoyed Breath of the Wild, but unlike seemingly every other person in the world, I didn't love it -- it's not my new favorite Zelda game (it might not even crack my top five), and I've enjoyed other open-world games better. And even despite liking the game, it has some major issues that seriously disappointed me.

Board Game Review: The Island of El Dorado

The Island of El Dorado (by Daniel Aronson) is a tile-laying exploration board game for 2-4 players (60-90 minutes) in which players are 16th century explorers discovering the island of El Dorado and competing to be the first to lay claim to all four shrines, which is said to grant the explorer access to untold wealth and power. A typical turn goes through a two-step process of first rolling two dice to determine how many spaces you can move your explorer as well as how many resources you produce at the beginning of your turn, and then going through your “explore phase” in which you move your explorer and/or villagers (who serve double-duty as both army units for combat as well as workers for resource-production) and spend resources to build structures, recruit more villagers, or give offerings to shrines. Players may also confront each other in direct combat by moving their explorer or army figures onto another player's space, rolling dice based on each player's total strength in the battle to determine a victor. Three of the shrines can be found scattered around the island, but the fourth is hidden inside a cave that must be explored separately, and which also houses assorted monsters and dangerous encounters. The first player to control all four shrines wins the game.

In practice, The Island of El Dorado plays like a cross between The Settlers of Catan and Risk, with a tile-laying exploration element like Betrayal at House on the Hill or Escape: Curse of the Temple where you build the map as you play. As a game with relatively light, simple rules and a high degree of luck, it's intended to be more of a family-weight game for families and more casual gamers, though the designer has since published rules for a "Hardcore Mode" intended for more strategic gamers who dislike how much of a factor luck plays in the standard rules. I backed the first Kickstarter because I hoped it would serve as a more pleasant alternative to Catan, since it fits in the same weight class and has so many superficial similarities (plus, I'm a sucker for exploration games) but I find that I just don't like it very much, or at least not with any of the current rules. Even for a family-weight game, the luck element is just too prevalent in this game, and I feel like it runs too long for such a simple, luck-dependent game. The "Hardcore Mode" rules help, but I have some issues with those, too. The bulk of this review will deal with the standard rules, and then I'll discuss the "Hardcore Mode" rules separately.

Prey's "Mooncrash" DLC Perfects the Immersive-Sim Gameplay Formula of the Base Game in a Unique Roguelite Mode

Arkane Studios’ Prey (2017) was a surprise hit for me, mostly because it was such a great experience but also because it seemed to come out of nowhere with no real hype. I had barely heard anything about it when it was released, but the promise of it being a spiritual successor to System Shock 2 (one of my all-time favorite FPS games and one of the most highly regarded immersive sims ever created) immediately caught my interest. I figured it would be a good game, knowing Arkane’s pedigree (I’ve enjoyed every game of theirs that I’ve played) but I wasn’t expecting to be so thoroughly enamored with it or to have my mind blown by its creative twists and clever open-ended design. Sadly, I don’t think it sold very well, and so I was fully expecting it to be considered done and over with by publisher Bethesda, which then made the sudden Mooncrash DLC announcement even more shocking. After about a year of radio silence from Arkane and Bethesda, they began vaguely teasing something Prey-releated and then a few weeks later made the official announcement the very same day the DLC launched.

Mooncrash is a quasi-roguelite game mode featuring a new protagonist on a new level, the Pytheas moon base operated by TransStar rival Kasma Corp. You play as Some Guy in a small one-man satellite orbiting the moon, running through simulations as various characters trying to escape from a Typhon outbreak on the moon base. As a roguelite game mode, death is permanent and you can't save, while a lot of elements like item spawns, enemy placement, environmental hazards, and so on get randomized every time you start a new run, although the level layouts and the general objectives you’re trying to complete remain the same. The twist, compared to other roguelite games, is that you play multiple characters successively in a shared, persistent world -- what you do as one character affects how things will play out for another character, since someone else has already gone through and changed things by the time the next character’s run begins. Each of the five characters has their own unique skill trees, stats, and abilities which affect how you play the game as each character. Your goal is to find a way to escape with all five characters in one run, but you’ll have to run the simulation multiple times to unlock each of them, as well as to complete their story missions and to figure out a good strategy to ensure successful escape attempts.

This DLC is a very different experience than the base game. While they share similar settings and have a lot of the exact same gameplay mechanics, the base game focused more on slow-burn atmosphere and exploration with a lot of carefully scripted events, a linear main story, and a wealth of side characters, side stories, and side missions to flesh out the rest of the world. Mooncrash focuses less on the story and plays more like an immersive-sim sandbox; you’re dropped into four adjoining maps (which are themselves fairly spacious and open) with a bunch of randomized variables and given a single primary objective -- escape. There’s still a backstory that you can gleam from assorted emails, audio logs, notes, and even the five main characters’ personal story missions, but there’s no “main story” to speak of, since it doesn’t play like a straightforward campaign -- it’s a mashup of gameplay mechanics meant to bring out the best elements of emergent gameplay and fast-paced, improvisational thinking. In essence, Mooncrash takes the gameplay elements of the base game and cranks them up to eleven.

DreadOut -- An Indie Horror Game That's Actually (Surprisingly) Good

DreadOut (2014) is an indie horror game in which you play as Linda, a school girl on a field trip that takes a wrong turn and gets her (along with her teacher and classmates) trapped in a literal ghost town where seemingly every spirit is out to kill or possess you. As the rest of your classmates are picked off one by one, your goal is to find a way to rescue your friend Ira and, eventually, a way to escape the ghost town without succumbing to the ghosts' malicious intentions.

In practice, it plays a bit like a cross between Silent Hill (you're wandering around a creepy abandoned town) and Fatal Frame (taking pictures of ghosts to vanquish them), but without any sort of survival-horror health systems or resource management. Although it has a quasi sort of combat system vaguely reminiscent of a first-person shooter (if you substitute your camera for a gun, it's kind of the same principle), this is more of what you'd consider a "pure" horror game where it's not at all about the action -- it's more about the atmosphere and the scares, with hints of light puzzle solving sprinkled into the equation.

The game is split into three chapters; an introductory dream sequence that acts as kind of a prologue or teaser for the full game, and two full chapters where you're trapped in a location (one is set in a school, the other in a mansion) and trying to find a way out. Each chapter has some kind of vague over-arching goal you're trying to accomplish, but it's really just a matter of "try to find the next thing you have to do to advance the game" while dodging ghosts or taking pictures of them in the right way to vanquish them, solving puzzles (sometimes by finding and using inventory items like keys, or by taking pictures of things from the correct angle), and facing a sort of boss encounter at the end of each chapter.

As a low-budget indie game, it definitely looks the part -- low-resolution textures, blocky models, stiff animations, flat voice acting, weird user interface, stiff and sometimes unresponsive controls, random poor design choices, etc -- but it actually works surprisingly well as a horror game, not just aesthetically but mechanically as well. I went into DreadOut with no real expectations, other than my own desire to enjoy it since I like horror games so much and am always looking forward to finding horror games that are actually scary (or at least entertaining), and came away really pleased with the experience. It's not perfect, mind you -- even in terms of its horror elements, it has some rough spots -- but if you like horror games then this is one I can absolutely recommend.

Get Even: A Uniquely Fascinating Game With a Generically Uninteresting Name

Get Even (2017) is a first-person psychological thriller with elements of FPS action, stealth, and puzzle-solving wrapped up in a science-fiction detective theme, in which you play as a mercenary named Black being sent into people's memories through a virtual reality machine to try to figure out who's behind the kidnapping of a high school girl named Grace, who was being held for ransom with a bomb strapped to her chest. You wake up in a run-down asylum with no memory except that you were sent to rescue Grace, but failed. The last thing you remember is the bomb exploding as you tried to defuse it. With a VR headset permanently strapped to your head, you find yourself guided through the asylum by a man named Red, who communicates with you remotely through computer screens. The rest of the game alternates between progressing through the asylum while the inmates run amok, and going into memories related to the kidnapping, which act as more conventional "levels" that you can replay searching for more evidence you may have missed, or changing your approach to achieve a different ending.

Developed by The Farm 51, the company behind Necrovision, Painkiller: Hell & Damnation, and Deadfall Adventures, Get Even is predominantly a "story game," the type of thing where narrative presentation takes priority over gameplay systems, as you're mostly there to take part in the story. There's plenty enough gameplay elements involved as you periodically sneak or fight your way past enemies, solve puzzles, and search for hidden evidence, that it doesn't garner the pejorative "walking simulator" label, but you do spend a lot of time simply walking around and watching scenes play out, or reading emails and listening to phone conversations, as you try to piece together the story and solve the mystery. While the gameplay is perfectly fine and serviceable (it even has a few innovative features, like the "corner gun" that lets you aim around corners or use it like a periscope), the story and the atmosphere it creates are the real reasons to play this game; these elements are absolutely top notch, and they work together to create a pretty unique and memorable experience.

On Role-Playing Games: How I Define "RPG" and What I Expect From RPGs

The term "role-playing game" has become somewhat nebulous and unhelpful these days when it comes to categorizing video games, in large part because so many games have started implementing RPG elements in their gameplay designs, causing the line between "RPG" and "not-RPG" to blur. Sometimes the distinction is easy to make, if the RPG elements are obviously secondary to some greater gameplay emphasis, but the advent and popularity of hybrid games (like the Mass Effect series, for instance, which are equal parts RPG and action-shooter) have raised serious questions about how we should classify RPGs, since nearly every RPG these days now falls on a wide spectrum based on "how much an RPG" it actually is. When thinking of what games I'd put in a "Top 10 Favorite RPGs" list, for instance, I struggle with deciding whether certain games should even be on the list; for example, is Deus Ex actually an RPG? What about Dark Souls? In both cases, my gut says "no," but you could make an argument for both games, based on how you actually define what constitutes a role-playing game.

A key issue with this debate is that different people have different definitions; for some, the simple presence of a leveling system makes any game an RPG, while others insist that it's more about choice and consequences, while still more people would say that it's about being able to make a character (or an entire party) and explore a large open world, playing the game however you want. In truth, there are a lot of specific mechanisms and general concepts that go into making an RPG, but it's probably not appropriate to draw a hard line in the sand and declare that "if a game doesn't have have these specific elements, then it's not an RPG." As the folks at Extra Credits have pointed out, mechanics don't define genres; why we play them, or what we're looking to get out of them, does. And as the classic Potter Stewart quote goes, "[I can't define it], but I know it when I see it." Which is to say, there's an inherently subjective logic about how we perceive and classify these games, and it's not always easy to put into words. But I'm going to try.

Fallout 4: A Case of Simultaneously Being Pretty Good and also Sucking Hard

It's no secret that I harbor a great deal of contempt for Bethesda Softworks. Every game of theirs that I've played (Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Skyrim) has majorly disappointed me, usually feeling like a soulless shell of some better game that might've been (or in some cases, that actually is/was). That disappointment stems generally from a combination of their shallow world designs and repetitive gameplay, both of which tend to feel lacking in meaningful depth or interesting systems, all in worlds that are so big they wear out their welcome well before their playtime runs out. A chief criticism of mine, especially lately, is that they just don't feel like very good RPGs, and yet ironically they've been generally improving by progressively devaluing the RPG side of things.

Fallout 4 is, to this point, the pinnacle of Bethesda taking a step back and essentially deciding that they're not even going to try to make role-playing games anymore -- they're just going to make open-world action-adventure games. As such, Fallout 4 is by far the most "dumbed-down" (ie, "streamlined") game Bethesda has ever made, but that's a good thing I feel. These were already pretty simple, mindless games to begin with, and so now it's easier to appreciate these games for what they actually are, instead of pretending they're something they're not and then feeling disappointed about it. As a result, I actually kind of liked Fallout 4 and sunk an unfathomable amount of time into it (235 hours, to be exact).

And yet, despite all the time I put into it, and despite saying that I "kind of liked" it, there's still a lot that's critically wrong with Fallout 4, to the point that I honestly can't say it's a good game. Sure, it's pretty good for what it is (a Bethesda game, and certainly not a Fallout game), but the bar is so low with these games that being "pretty good for a Bethesda game" isn't really much of a compliment. It still has all the inherent problems of a Bethesda game, and somehow, some of those problems are actually worse than they've ever been. It's hard to believe that, while Bethesda's games have steadily gotten a little more polished and a little bit fancier with each release, they've never really evolved when it comes to the core game design (you could even argue they've actually devolved over time), while Fallout 4 stands strong as an iconic example of just how questionable and misguided Bethesda's design decisions can actually be.

Fallout 4: My New Favorite Game of This Decade

It's no secret that I harbor a great deal of contempt for Bethesda Softworks. Every game of theirs that I've played (Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Skyrim) has majorly disappointed me, usually feeling like a soulless shell of some better game that might've been (or in some cases, that actually is/was). That disappointment stems generally from a combination of their shallow world designs and repetitive gameplay, both of which tend to feel lacking in meaningful depth or interesting systems, all in worlds that are so big they wear out their welcome well before their playtime runs out. A chief criticism of mine, especially lately, is that they just don't feel like very good RPGs, and yet ironically they've been generally improving by progressively devaluing the RPG side of things.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I decided to give Fallout 4 a chance (only because it was on a free weekend event -- I wasn't about to pay Bethesda for the opportunity to play another one of their disappointing games), and actually liked it. Like, really, really liked it. I get that some people might not like it because it's technically a step back from Fallout 3 and New Vegas, at least from an RPG standpoint, but I honestly didn't care. The first-person action is absolutely on point in this game -- the best it's ever been in a Bethesda game -- and the world was so much fun to explore, with so much to see and do. I also, surprisingly, liked how the voiced protagonist offered your character a lot more personality, and the dialogue system itself, meanwhile, flows really nicely. There's a much more cinematic feel to this game, which makes it look simply gorgeous to play, and as we all know, visual presentation is one of the most important things when it comes to game design.

There's a lot more I could talk about, of course, which I'll get into in the full article, but to sum up the teaser section before getting into the more detailed section of things: I was not expecting to like Fallout 4, and was blown away by just how good it actually is. Bethesda have out-done themselves, and I truly feel like this represents a new major step forward for what they're capable of accomplishing. It's so good that I think I can safely say that it's my new favorite game of this decade, easily bumping Prey 2017 out of the top spot. Anyway, on to the actual review.

Fallout 4 Mod Guide: Recommendations and Mini-Reviews

I've been playing Fallout 4 lately, and as always seems to be the case with Bethesda games, it practically requires a bunch of user-created mods to spruce up and polish the overall experience. That statement, of course, is meant to be a somewhat disdainful commentary on the way Bethesda designs their games, but I don't want to get into a long rant about why that's the case. (Maybe that'll be part of another article, later.) Rather, I just want to take a moment to showcase some of the many mods I've been running in my lengthy playthrough, with descriptions and mini-reviews for why I'm using them and what I think of them, plus recommendations for how essential I think a mod is and when it should be installed.

According to the Nexus Mod Manager, I currently have over 150 mods installed, though that number is misleading because some of the mods use multiple optional, modular plugins which count as separate mods (the item sorting mod that I'm using, for instance, accounts for 12 different plugins) or require compatibility patches to work with other mods, which again count as separate mods. I played about 30 hours of unmodded "Vanilla" Fallout 4 before I started installing mods, and from there it was a cascading effect. It started with basic "quality of life" improvements in the gameplay to fix minor/major annoyances, and then shifted to atmospheric overhauls with the visuals and audio to make the game look and feel more pleasant to play, and then towards the end became a matter of adding in all new content to keep things fresh and interesting.

This article is meant to be a recommendation guide for which mods I think are worth installing if you're planning to play Fallout 4, but it's by no means a comprehensive, exhaustive guide of everything. There are a lot of highly-rated, super-popular mods that I chose to pass on for my own personal reasons, one of the main ones being that I wanted to stay pretty close to "Vanilla" for the bulk of my playthrough (ruling out massive overhauls like Horizon), or had to pass on because I lacked the required DLC (ruling out the unofficial patch and revamped user interfaces), while other mods affected things that I just didn't care about (like Sim Settlements or any of the other settlement mods). This article is simply a look at some of the mods I'm actually using; use it as a basis to start your own research, and then go from there.

What All is Wrong With Gothic 1's Back Cover

I was looking at a few games on my shelf recently and decided to grab a few and take a closer look at them. Upon closer inspection, I realized that a lot of what's printed on the back of the box for Gothic 1 is straight up wrong or subtly misleading. I'm not sure if this is due to basic ignorance, as if the person writing these blurbs on the back of the box had no first-hand experience with the game and was simply making stuff up based on general statements they'd been told by someone else, or if it's a deliberate marketing spin to try to sell the game. This has no bearing on the quality of the actual game, of course, and I don't think it even affects anyone anywhere anymore anyway anytime since anyone buying Gothic for the first time is likely buying it digitally based on word of mouth, not what's printed on the back of the box. Most people won't ever even see the back cover unless they own a physical copy or deliberately search for pictures of it. Anyway, since I found this so interesting, I figured I'd share these observations with you and give you a quick rundown on what all is wrong with the back cover.

Prey: My Favorite Game of This Decade

Prey is a science-fiction-themed first-person shooter from 2006, in which you play as a Cherokee named Tommy running loose on an alien spaceship as he tries to rescue his girlfriend, Jen, after they're both abducted in an alien invasion. Built on the Doom 3 engine, it plays pretty much like a standard Doom-style corridor-crawler of that era. What makes it noteworthy, besides its convoluted 11-year development cycle and infamously-canceled sequel, is its implementation of mind-bending alien technology that allows you to move through dimensional portals, change gravity, and shrink to minuscule sizes, in addition to its array of strange alien weaponry. I pre-ordered the "Limited Collector's Edition" back in the day and enjoyed the game well enough (it's still on my shelf), but never felt a fanatical attachment to it.

Prey is also a science-fiction-themed first-person immersive-simulator from 2017, in which you play as Morgan Yu making his (or her -- you choose your gender) inaugural trip to the moon-orbiting research station Talos I. Once you arrive, you discover that the station has been attacked by a strange alien lifeform; most of its crew is dead, many of its systems are out of operation, and you have seemingly no way off the station. The rest of the game sees Morgan piecing the history together of what happened to Talos I and its crew while combining stealth, combat, hacking, and alien abilities (among many other skills and options) in an open-ended system that gives you a lot of freedom about how you complete objectives and how you play your character. This new Prey, in fact, bears no resemblance to the original Prey, having absolutely no connection except for the name.

Conceived by developer Arkane Studios (Arx Fatalis, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, Dishonored) as a spiritual successor to System Shock 2, the name Prey was given to the game by publisher Bethesda, who owned the trademark ever since they picked up the publishing rights to Prey 2, which they canceled several years ago. With no official work being done on Prey 2, I guess they wanted to get some kind of use out of the name that they'd already bought, and since Arkane's pitch of surviving an alien attack on a space station vaguely matched the theme and basic concepts of the Prey license (in addition to making linguistic sense -- the aliens prey on human life), they decided to go with it. Hence Prey (2017) having the same name as the 2006 cult hit, even though it is, essentially, System Shock 3.

None of that really matters, though, because the game is great. I'm a big fan of the style of games pioneered by Looking Glass Studios (and similar developers, some of them borne directly from Looking Glass survivors) in the late 90s and early 2000s like Thief, System Shock 2, Deus Ex, Vampire Bloodlines, and so on, and I've enjoyed every game that Arkane has ever created. Putting Arkane in charge of a System Shock-like game is like a match made in heaven, and they pulled it off with near-perfect mastery. Prey is what I wanted BioShock to be, since it's a much more faithful adaptation of the System Shock 2 formula, and plays a lot like those games I mentioned previously, except with the added benefit of modern production values. It ticks every box for things I enjoy in video games; it's one of the most enjoyable games I've ever played, and it's my favorite game to have come out in this decade.

The Nocturnal Rambler is Now on Patreon!

Some more news to go with the other minor changes I've made to the blog: I've decided to launch on Patreon. I've been running this blog long enough (nearly seven years) that I figure it's time I start trying to capitalize on the work I put into it. The advantage of Patreon is that it creates a direct avenue between content creators and their fans, allowing me to get paid for my work while also giving back to you all with extra rewards and content for supporting me.

My reviews have always been free to read, and that's not going to change; I'll continue to post reviews and articles here on the blog as usual, and you'll be able to continue reading them as normal. For those of you who choose to support me on Patreon, I'll be posting more frequent thoughts, opinions, and observations (over on Patreon) in the form of "Random Ramblings" and "Early Impressions," while also keeping you more informed with status updates about what games I'm playing and what articles I'm planning. I'll also be setting up polls to let you vote for what games I play next, and I may even take special requests on occasion. These extras are split into separate reward tiers so you can choose how much you want to give based on what extras you'd like to gain access to.

All of the money you contribute will go directly back into the blog by helping me pay for the games I play and review. With enough support, I could buy (and review) new releases more frequently, and I could look into doing other things besides written reviews like live streams, let's plays, and/or video reviews. Patreon is, essentially, a way for everyone to get more out of the work I do; Patrons gain access to extra content, I get paid for my work, and everyone benefits from me being able to produce more and better content. There's more information over on Patreon, so I encourage you to check out my page there to read more on the subject. 

I also want to thank you all for all the support and appreciation you've shown through comments and emails over the years; it's meant a lot to me, and has been a primary motivating factor in keeping the blog running for so many years. If you like the work I do and want to help this blog grow into something more substantial, then I hope you'll consider also supporting me on Patreon. Thanks again for your consideration; I look forward to seeing where this blog can go in the future.

New Nav Pages and Other Site Changes

I just wanted to take a moment to point out a few minor tweaks I've made to the blog layout. If you've visited any time in the last few days you may have noticed some of the changes already. 

First up is the new banner image at the top of every page. The original banner was something I made way before realizing that this blog would be entirely video game related; the new banner is a little bigger and more colorful, plus it pops a bit better, and has some video game imagery built right into it to allow newcomers to more quickly realize that the blog centers mostly around video games. I don't play a lot of retro 8-bit games, so that part may be a little misleading, but I liked the contrast that those images provided against the nebulous background.

Next up are the new main pages on the top navigation bar. The "About the Rambler" page is a more thorough biography, of sorts, going into a bit more detail about my history and background as a gamer, with a brief description of what I do when I'm not playing video games, and also explaining my thoughts on the blog itself. The "List of Games Played" page is a full list of virtually every game I've played, in chronological order, since October 30th, 2006. The entire posting history of this blog is contained in that list, but it goes back several years before I started doing reviews here. It's literally just a list, but I thought it would be fun to share, so you could see a little bit more info on what games I've played in the past.

Finally, this change is much less significant, but I changed the "Random Posts" widget in the side bar to show a preview of the article text, and reduced the number of displayed posts in the side bar from five down to four. I also tweaked the overall dimensions of the blog, making each of the side bars 20 pixels wider to allow for a slightly longer line of text before hitting a line break. This, to me, just looks more pleasing to the eye, since it prevents a single long word from dominating an entire line of space and forcing a tag (on the left) or a headline (on the right) from being displayed one word at a time down a long column.

None of these changes are very significant, of course -- I'm sure some people may not have even noticed -- but I wanted to point them out all the same (especially those two pages in the nav bar) since they kind of blend in with the basic layout. There's still one more change I want to make that I haven't done yet; I'll be detailing that in a separate post in a day or two, once it's ready to launch. 

Gothic 3 Sucks -- A Critique From a Longtime Gothic Fan

Note: this article has since been updated with extra sections, more elaborations, and a full video. See the updated post here for the updated version.

Gothic and Gothic 2 are two of my favorite games of all time, being two of the games that had the most influence on my young and developing mind when I first played them in the early 2000s. And yet I harbor virtually no love for Gothic 3. I've barely mentioned it in any of my Gothic articles because I don't even like to consider it part of the series; it doesn't connect to Gothic 2 very well, and the whole gameplay formula is a radical departure from what made Gothic and Gothic 2 so great. Even though it was made by the same developer, Piranha Bytes, Gothic 3 feels like a different game by a different group of people who had only a vague understanding of what the Gothic games were, and who were told to make everything "bigger and more epic" in order to compete with the likes of Morrowind and Oblivion. Spoiler alert: they failed miserably.

Gothic 3 is a classic case of a game being ruined by ambition, of a developer trying to reach beyond their own means and biting off more than they could chew. The game, besides being unfinished and under-developed, was a buggy mess upon its release, and it took years of fan-made patches to supposedly "fix" the game and make it functional. The community patch is now 1.5GB of files (the whole "vanilla" version is only 4.6GB, total) and contains numerous bug fixes and stability tweaks, and also attempts to completely redesign and rebalance the combat system. I played the game at launch (late 2006) before the community patch even existed, and again a few years later with it, and while the patch truly does a lot to improve the game's overall playability, it doesn't (and simply cannot) fix the core gameplay design and story problems, which are the real reasons Gothic 3 sucks -- not just the bugs and broken combat that the patch supposedly fixes.

Normally I'd be content to dismiss the issue and move on with life (the game's over a decade old, after all, and I haven't even played it in about eight or nine years), but I find it surprising that, even today, people still speak highly of Gothic 3. With the recent release of Elex, newcomers to Piranha Bytes games frequently ask about their previous games and which ones are worth playing, and people readily leap to defend (or even recommend) Gothic 3, usually with the caveat that you need to play with the community patch. That's sound advice, of course, but I just can't justify recommending Gothic 3 to anyone because of how bad of a Gothic game it is, and how mediocre it is, just as a game in general. So in this article I'll be explaining my opinion on Gothic 3 and why I think it sucks.

Resident Evil 7 DLC Review: "Not A Hero" and "End of Zoe"

December 12th saw the release of what might be the final pieces of DLC for Resident Evil 7 -- the free Not A Hero scenario in which you play as Chris Redfield trying to find Lucas in the moments immediately following the base game's conclusion, and the $14.99 End of Zoe (part of the season pass) in which you play as Joe Baker (Jack's brother) trying to find a cure for Zoe after she starts being crystallized by the mold, as seen in the base game. Each scenario lasts roughly two hours and provides closure for some loose end of the main story. This final (?) round of DLC feels like a nice coda for a game that I absolutely loved, the final bit of content to round everything out into a full and complete experience, and yet I also feel somewhat underwhelmed by them, and perhaps in the case of one of them, outright disappointed. See the full review for my thoughts on each one.