作者彙整: Javy Gwaltney

Warning: Spoilers ahead for both Far Cry 5 and New Dawn.

Far Cry 5 was a game with a lot of ideas. How could a gang of armed cultists take control in small-town America? What would a first-person shooter in that setting play like? What if the bad guy wasn’t just morally complicated but, in the end, was right, with the end of the world raining down nuclear fire on everyone? These ideas are interesting. Too bad Far Cry 5 handled those ideas with the grace of a tipsy goose. Joseph Seed’s Manbunny version of David Koresh is far more annoying than intriguing, and the game zig-zagged from any deep thematic storytelling its cult-ish premise presented at nearly every opportunity. Far Cry 5 could have been an engaging and disturbing take on modern America. That it settled for so less still bums me out a year later.

But let’s not belabor the point, yeah? I only want to talk about Far Cry 5’s failings to the point that I can discuss something that New Dawn does really well. So the setup of New Dawn, a proper sequel to Far Cry 5, is the world has ended and you’re a new character called The Captain, who’s working with a bunch of freedom fighters to try and restore order to the world. 

The protagonist of 5, the Deputy, is apparently dead. The last we saw of them was they were locked away in Seed’s bunker as nuclear winter raged. Speaking of Joseph Seed, the jerk is still around in Naw Dawn. A lot of the supporting cast from 5 is too, including (now blind) sniper Grace, pastor Jerome, and the ever-annoying buffoon Hurk—more or less Far Cry’s mascot. As you progress through New Dawn’s campaign, you also learn someone else is still kicking around too and it’s a horrifying revelation even for someone who didn’t take to 5’s story.

After meeting up with Joseph Seed’s band of loons, you have several run-ins with a mysterious character named The Judge. The Judge’s gender isn’t clear. The Judge doesn’t talk, wears a mask, and only hisses to communicate with people. Eventually The Judge becomes your companion, on loan to you from Joseph Seed himself, which is cool because The Judge is pretty great at stealth takedowns! However, as you search bunkers and come across other companions with The Judge in tow, the bloody puzzle pieces start to come together. Jerome and Hurk try to chat with The Judge about old times they all shared; the Judge only hisses in response.

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Somewhere nestled between these conversations and the notes you find, it sinks in. The Judge is the Deputy. A combination of Seed’s psychotic manipulations, the state of the world, and Rook’s own failure have reduced them to a wild animal hiding behind a mask, capable of nothing but murdering whoever Seed or the player tell them to. In that way, The Judge has become the basest (some would argue purest) version of what Far Cry and most other first-person shooters demand of their player: a ravenous killing machine.

The natural execution of the reveal, placing enough faith in players to do the work instead of making a huge, cinematic-driven ceremony out of The Judge’s identity, is probably the narrative high point for the series in years. When the realization settles in, it works for a number of reasons. The first is that it confirms that everything the Deputy did in Far Cry 5 didn’t actually matter one bit. All their actions were just futile resistance against an inescapable doom, which makes that moment sting. The reveal also got me thinking about the protagonist of Far Cry 5 in a more nuanced way than just the avatar you inhabit, something you use to shoot guns and soak in the exposition of other characters. New Dawn’s twist turns the Deputy into an actual character trapped in a hellish fate, one that your new character, The Captain, could very well be doomed to repeat.

Like Far Cry 5, New Dawn has a lot of ideas. However, unlike 5, it executes a lot of them competently and even makes one of them compelling. I’m impressed that New Dawn took a character from 5 that I didn’t care about, despite literally playing as them for hours on end, and made me feel sad and invested with this small but impressive twist of the knife. I’d love to see future entries in the series embrace these kind of smaller but powerful stories instead of making a lot of noise about political themes it actually has no interest in engaging with.

For more on Far Cry New Dawn, read our review and tips.

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Reader, I’m gonna level with you: I don’t care for sports.  The most I’ve ever been invested in a sport was reading about Gryffindor win the Inter-House Quidditch Cup or guiding my misfits to freedom in Pyre. I grew up in small-town America, where football, soccer, and baseball were a way of life.  I tried my hand at soccer and enjoyed it, but that enjoyment quickly soured to resentment thanks to bullying. That resentment eventually manifested in a complete disinterest in all things sports. However, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve found myself curious about some forms of athleticism and even more curious about what video games do with various sports – how developers present and package sports, what they choose to focus on, and whether or not they’re accommodating to newcomers. 

I decided that it was time for me to fill in a particularly deep genre gap for and play some sports games. Given that I live in the snowy fantasy land that is Minnesota and that I love watching people beat the hell out of each other, hockey was the obvious go-to: the one that would lead me into the shallow end of the icy pond and show me how to doggy paddle. With that impression in mind, I picked up NHL 19 and decided to spend a week playing it and writing about my experience for my fellow scrubs who are intimidated by the genre but also curious.

Here’s how my week with NHL 19 is going, in all its misery and glory.

Day 1: Interference

How hard can hockey be? There’s a stick. There’s a puck. There’s a goal. You get the puck into the goal that is not your goal. Simple. As the title screen loads for NHL 19, I’m feeling good about this experience, especially since the first menu that greets me is an accessibility loadout that lets you adjust sliders and options to tailor the game to your skill level.

How kind! Why yes, I will choose rookie. How nice of the game to ease me in. So far, so good. Let’s load into the main game now.

Oh. Okay. That’s a lot. Wow. That’s … hockey’s just one game, right? Intimidating, but okay. I’ve got this.

Let’s do franchise mode. I’ve always wanted to own a franchise. I would have settled for Dairy Queen, but a hockey team is good. Sure.

Uhhhhhh.

Why is there so much? WHY?

I just wanted to hit a puck with a stick.

Okay. We’re just … we’re just gonna head out of this. That’s for the best, I think.

Heading back into the main screen, I see a season mode far below franchise mode. Loading into that, I find something more in line with what I expected: You take a team through an entire season of NHL play, with far less emphasis on management-driven systems (though you can still trade players). I am a simple, impulsive man so I choose the Minnesota Wild for no other reason than I live in Minnesota.  Our managing editor Matt Bertz later tells me this is a grievous error, and upon further examination of the team’s hideous Mountain Dew-like color scheme, I realize he might be right. But we’re here, reader. You, me, and the Minnesota Wild. We’ve committed to this. We’re going to ride this train to hell.

I load into the first match and am paired up against the Chicago Blackhawks. Within seconds of the game, the basics become obvious: Jump from body to body as you pursue the puck down the ice, with two buttons dedicated to hitting the puck. One is for wrist shots (when you’re aiming for accuracy over speed), the other for snap shots (vice versa). The first of the three periods is brutal. I don’t get scored on, but I’m having a hell of a time just keeping control of the puck. The few times I do manage, I’m slapping it against the steel of the goal or watching it sail smoothly into the goalie’s hand.

The second period is even worse. As I fumble through memorizing the control scheme, the Blackhawks get a few snap shots off on me, scoring two goals within seconds of one another. Booooooo. I’m just not enjoying this experience at all. The physics are weird, the controls seemingly unresponsive, and the commentators are so annoying.  I hit the last intermission and wonder how anyone could find this game fun.

Loading into the third period, I quickly find my answer. The adjustment period finishes, and my fingers go where they’re supposed to when they’re supposed as I nimbly jump between characters and pass the puck back and forth. After the failures of the previous periods, I finally develop a strategy other than desperately passing and shooting when we’re all bunched together at the opposing goal. We zig and zag down the line, passing pucks between Blackhawk players and then shooting a few feet from the goal. The first few attempts don’t pan out, but as the clock ticks down to three minutes, my proper lad and Wild captain Mikko Koivu SLAMS the puck from a distance and sends it soaring into the corner of the net. The crowd goes wild. The commentators call it a howitzer. My players all cheer and hug as fans stamp their feet and our weirdo mascot does an awkward dance. I notice dimly seconds after I’ve done it that I’ve put my fist in the air and hollered in celebration.

We still lose, of course, but that moment of exhilaration makes it all worthwhile. I went from hopeless idiot to hopeless idiot who’s capable of scoring a single goal! I’m like Rocky, but also better than Rocky, because I didn’t get hit in the face.

Eat it, Balboa.

Day 2: Three’s Company

Reader, I’m in deep. After several games in season mode, with a fair share of wins and losses, I’ve started keeping a page of notes. It looks like this:

I think I might like hockey. A lot. At least the video game version of it. The initially frustrating controls have become exercises in mastering grace in twitchy situations. The frustration of clanging the puck against the steel frame of the goal over and over again upended by the uproarious exhilaration of finally sending the puck ripping into the net.  There’s also the gradual enjoyment I’m having of learning terms as new penalties and phrases flash across screen, causing me to shake my head and ask myself what the heck “offside” and “slashing” mean.

My favorite games are often those that teach their rules in interesting ways, with lessons often connected to an engaging progression system. Challenges in games like Destiny or Far Cry that reward you for using tools from your offensive arsenal in certain ways are a great example of that. However, what I love about playing NHL 19 as a total newbie is how compelling this onslaught of new terms and rules are. It’s overwhelming at first to a degree, with me having to constantly stop and do a few seconds worth of research to see why a play of mine got flagged or to understand why the game’s praising me for pulling off a certain kind of shot or move. However, the satisfaction of constantly learning something new is engaging.

To me, it’s a different strand of what I love about inhabiting a universe like Mass Effect. Yes, a sports game is entirely different than a sci-fi RPG but both experiences come down to parading a series of questions before the player, at least for someone who’s new to both games, like me.  Discovering the answers to “Why do the Geth invade worlds and who built the Citadel?” produce the same kind of entertainment as learning the different intricacies of hockey — the rules, the great players, the various reputations attached to different teams. Both experiences, as thematically separate as they are, are united by learning and developing an appreciation for the culture you’re inhabiting as a player. It doesn’t matter if that culture is sports-focused or an elaborate fantastical universe — you still have to acclimate yourself to those worlds.

It also feels nice to win, of course. That’s an obvious statement, but if you play games a lot, you often become desensitized to doing well in a game. However, as someone dabbling in a genre I’m not experienced in, it really does feel like I’m pulling off a magic track anytime I nail a shot or even pull off a saucer pass assist one of my teammates turns into a game-winning slap shot. I’m not great, of course. I doubt I’d last long in an online match against another player, but I’m outwitting and outpacing the A.I. more often than not.

However, as we discovered last time, NHL 2019 is a game with a lot of modes. Eventually I decide to pull out of season mode and try some other ones. After all, I want to do more than just play hockey. I want to explore all of NHL 19’s offerings and see how many variations it can create from the base game and how compelling all those are. With that in mind, I pick at random and load into NHL Threes.

What is Threes? The easiest way to think about it is a more arcadey version of the base game, hockey’s answer to NBA Jam. Threes reduces the players from five to three, speeds up the clock, shrinks the ice rink, gets rid of a lot of the rules and penalties, and introduces a whole ton of modifiers. The mode adds randomness, like a player on one of the teams being replaced halfway through the match by a mascot, and is inherently more wacky than anything else in NHL 19. The announcer is more of the BoomShakaLakka variety than an ESPN talking head, demanding the audience make noise or obnoxiously yelling about how you just missed your shot. As fun as this all sounds, I’m not really a big fan of the mode.

The reduced player-set up combined with a smaller rink and sped up clock are enticing changes that, on their own, make for a great way to play a version of hockey that whittles down the game to its basics. However, the random elements really disrupt the game in a way that’s not fun or fair. For example, random periods will have “money puck” modifiers, meaning the next goal will give the team that scores it two points, not one. While this might make for an exciting upset win, I think the unbalancing of the game in this mode makes it lose a lot of its luster for me.  Also, I’m not good at it, which means it’s automatically bad. Obviously.

Day 3: A Star Is Born

At long last, I think I can safely say that I am no longer a rookie — technically anyway. I’ve progressed far enough in my hockey journey to grasp the moment-by-moment fundamentals beyond a rudimentary understanding of the game. I’ve won some games, know the definitions of some penalties and plays (we’re going to crash the F out of this net my fellow pucksters), so I’m feeling cocky. With that in mind, I’m switching the difficulty up from Rookie to Semi-pro and changing the control setting to “Skill Stick.” Skill Stick is apparently the default one that most avid NHL 19 players use, so it makes sense to embrace that.

Switching back to season mode, I play a few Wild games to get a handle on the differences. Semi-pro doesn’t actually play that different in terms of opposing A.I. They’re a little faster but not overly aggressive. It’s more of a difficulty nudge than a spike. However, the control scheme change is a big shift that takes a few games to fully get used to. Basically, the two buttons dedicated to slap shots and wrist shots in Hybrid are replaced by giving the player full control over the stick with your controller’s right analog stick. A wrist shot is as quick as slapping the analog stick with your thumb, while pulling off a slapper requires you to take a half-second (a dangerous amount of time on the ice) and follow through with back to forward push. If you’re doing that while you’re moving at high speeds, chances are your hockey stick won’t connect with the puck, so I need to practice to get the hang of slappers.

All that said, after those transitory blues pass, I actually prefer Skill Stick. Sure, Hybrid controls make it easier to technically pull off a shot, but using the stick gives (at least the illusion) of more control over my shots. In any case, I’m doing far better than when I started the game. I go on a four-game winning streak with the Wild before deciding to switch over to a mode called World of Chel, a glowing tile in the overstuffed main menu. After a brief Google search to ease my curiosity (apparently “Chel” is an inside joke about how the ending of NHL sounds when said aloud: “EnAyChel”), I click into the mode.

To my delight I discover it’s a character-based mode where you make your own skater and customize him with various bits of gear. I don’t spend much time in the character customization menu, though there are plenty of options when it comes to facial structure, hair, and eye color:

I just decide to go with my mental image of a generic skater, which is this guy:

After that, I select Start and find myself greeted with yet another series of menus and game types. Only one of them is offline-focused, and while I’m feeling pretty good about my performance, I don’t think I’m ready for multiplayer yet. I select the offline option, something called Pro Am, and am led into a screen filled with a bunch of mini tournaments pitting you against A.I. teams. I pick one of them and load into a prep screen including….skill loadouts!? My heart sinks as I remember how Threes’ great minimalist design was ruined by its oddly implemented random elements. However, upon closer inspection, the skills you can equip (and earn by playing matches in World of Chel and leveling up) are tiny stat boosters.

Nothing that’s going to throw off the game as badly as money pucks do. I quickly put together my loadout and hop into the match.

So, uh, some big surprises! Apparently Pro Am, if you’re curious and clueless like me, translates to Professional-Amateur. Like its name implies, the mode has hobbyists (you and your team) playing against NHL stars. Cool, cool. So what does this setup mean in terms of  actual gameplay? Well, a few big things basically:

1. The clock is much shorter. Every period is two minutes.

2. There are only three skaters on each team (outside of the goalie).

3. Neither team wears a uniform. Everyone is just wearing whatever they want, usually a hoodie or winter jacket.

Those are all major differences, especially the uniform thing because it makes it hard to know who’s on which team. Not immediately knowing who your teammates are can make passing the puck a surprisingly tricky issue during heated moments. However, the biggest difference between Pro Am and the other modes I’ve played so far is that you’re controlling only one player, the guy or girl you made in the character creator. There is no hopping from player to player. In a sudden fit of realism, you’re confined to one puck-slapping-mortal coil. This isn’t a bad thing. In fact, it’s quite compelling. However, the transition is definitely a big one. During key moments in my first few matches, I’d try to jump from a body and end up signaling that I wanted a pass (which was quickly intercepted, of course). None of these instances thwarted my games during Pro Am, as my team soared to victory each time pretty easily, but the chaos is definitely noticeable during the adjustment period.

I actually dig Pro Am a fair bit. The mode boils hockey down to its essentials and doesn’t really tamper with that setup by throwing in odd elements for the sake of spicing things up (like Threes does). Getting in five or more matches done in an hour feels really nice too, compared to the more sluggishly paced regular matches.

You receive goofy loot for playing, too, so that’s pretty rad. You earn experience in World of Chel for winning matches. Every time you level up you get, I’m not joking here, a loot bag filled with a bunch of gear that you have to manually unzip. Really. I’m dead serious.

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That’s amazing.

Pro Am’s probably my favorite mode so far; it’s basically a nice balance between realism and arcade. It doesn’t hurt that the World Of Chel has a long tail thanks to the surprising amount of cosmetics you can get across all its mode, which run the gamut from team logos to goofy casual clothes to wear during Pro Am matches.

Here’s my current guy.

Now that…that is the face of a champion.

Day 4: Puck And Punishment

Reader, I regret to inform you I have been, as they say, “called out.” Managing editor Matthew Bertz, one of the three hockey fanatics in our offices, recently took to the comments section of this piece to disparage my beautiful character-created son Hal Jackson. This is what he said:

Usually my soul is steel and pride indestructible. However, given my vulnerability and anxiety in engaging in this new icy venture, Bertz’s words have cut me deep. As a result, Hal Jackson is dead. I have killed him. He has been deleted from the NHL and from life itself. Congratulations, Bertz. I hope you’re happy with yourself.

In his place, I’ve constructed a newer man, a better one, a man who represents everything that hockey is about. Grit. Determination. And grace in all things but especially punching people in the face. Meet Woody Wiffles, the man, some would say hero, we’ll be journeying through Pro Career Mode with.

So what is Pro Career mode? Like Pro Am, you’re confined to playing with one character-created avatar (in my case, my demi-god Woody), but this time you’re taking the character through a pro season of hockey — starting even before the season, with you having to show you’ve got the skills. After creating your character, you’re randomly placed on a junior hockey team and have to compete in a tournament. Your performance is graded and then you’re drafted by one of the NHL teams. You can also skip ahead to drafting if you want but, reader, I’m a journalist who’s quite serious about his work. We’re going to do this thing and we’re going to do it properly.

I load into the game and find myself greeted with a minimized version of the game’s standard career mode menu. I simulate the season as other teams play against each other before Woody and the Barrie Colts go up against The Regina Pats. I hit the ice and expect to blow through the game given my experience with Pro Am. I quickly pay the price for my arrogance. The Pats are vicious, much faster and coordinated than any team I’ve played against. They check us into the boards, intercept passes with grace, and basically dance around us. Furthermore, I’m really sloppy with Woody. My standard strategy of blocking passes and poking the puck is backfiring massively, with Woody collecting penalties and being sent to the box over and over again.

A curious thing about the box: you actually go to there as the player and sit there in first-person. You’re also expected to change lines and sit on the bench whenever the coach tells you to do so. You can breeze through these periods with a skip button that simulates the match while you’re not in it, but it’s a fascinating experience that really draws attention to the necessity of teamwork. The coach, presented as a text box with various statistics as well as praises and suggestions for improvement, does a great job go honing in on your successes and failures. The coach even goes so far as to set goals for your player throughout the season, encouraging you to gain experience in various categories like offense, teamplay, and so on. Pro Career mode is essentially just Hockey RPG, and I’m really digging it.

You gain experience in-match for pulling off basic actions competently or exceptionally. Get a great shot off on the goalie? Even if it doesn’t result in a goal, a green notification pops up to award you 25 EXP. Same for passing, doing a massive body hit, signaling your team appropriately, and changing lines when your coach tells you to. After the match, you get a readout screen that looks like this, informing you of your successes as well as areas you need to improve on:

Turns out Woody is really bad at playing well with others. I keep accidentally causing penalties so, as the next few matches unfold, I try new strategies. Instead of poking the opposing team constantly, I try and put distance between us, and focus on blocking shots by sticking my stick out in front of our goalie when the puck is near. This actually results in quite a few saves. I’m pretty impressed with how fluidly the coaching mechanic actually teaches you to teach yourself new strategies. Also, the tension when you’re in the box, looking on powerless as your teammates go after the puck is great. At one point, I was on the bench after scoring a goal and then, after simulating the next five minutes, went on the ice to find we were tired. The same thing happened in the next game except our team got two on the opposing team, essentially giving us a victory. While other bits of randomness in NHL 19’s setup are annoying, this one feels like a natural part of the game. You can’t carry your team, after all. Success depends on everyone’s efforts, not just your own.

In the end, despite losing one of the matches, Woody and the Colts take the cup, which is great for Woody because it means he ends up being #18 when the draft comes around. And we end up playing for (drum roll please) these folks!

I have no idea if The Blue Jackets are a good team. I ask Bertz and he says they’re decent. I don’t know if I can trust him, but it’s not much like I have much of a choice. Woody and I are on the edge of glory and ready to prove ourselves.

Day 5: The Kid Stays In The Picture

Y’all. Pro Career mode is ROUGH. Not in a bad way. It’s just crushing though, difficulty-wise. After being drafted by The Blue Jackets, the first four games of the preseason are total losses. However, I don’t feel too bad about it, oddly enough.

So much of Pro Career mode is individual-focused. It’s not about how the team does but instead how the player contributes. For example, the first game I play, which pits us against the Hurricanes, is pretty lousy all around. I keep messing up passes and getting into fights so that I’m basically out most of the game. However, in the games after that, my performance picks up.

I’m passing well, delivering big hits, and even scoring a handful of goals. However, during the simulated periods when I’m in the box, The Blue Jackets keep getting points scored on them. It’s a weird situation because I feel like, and the various post-game statistics show, that I’m doing my part. And yet we keep losing because of things beyond my control, namely that our goalie is AWFUL.

So far Pro Career is the mode that excites and rankles me the most. I don’t think it’s the best part of my NHL 19 experience so far (that’d be Pro Am) but it’s one where I’m never bored. I’m either on the edge of my seat in anticipation of us scoring a goal or seated firmly in despair as our goalie just lets someone walk the puck in.

I think Pro Career does a really good job of simulating you as someone desperate to impress onlookers and eager to be a valuable part of a team. I wish I had more time to spend with the mode to see it until the end, but it apparently goes on forever and I just don’t have that much time in a week. Instead, I think it’s time to take things to a new level.

That’s right.

We’re gonna go online.

Day 6: The Human Condition

Up until this point, all I’ve done play is play with and against A.I. players. I’ve played a ton of modes in NHL 19 but my only compatriots have been the game’s computer. Today, that changes. Hockey experts Matt Bertz, Matt Kato, and Kim Wallace have offered to let me play a handful of games in multiplayer to get a sense of what it’s like to play with real human beings. Given that for the past three years I’ve listened to this trio speak in a language of pucks, player trades, and penalties that is finally becoming understandable to me, I could not be in better company.

Bertz sets up the lobby and sends the rest of us invites. Things don’t get off to a smooth start, with the game disconnecting at least one of us when we go from the lobby into a match prep screen. On the third attempt, we all manage to stay together. Each of us picks a portion (I go with right wing) and the rest of our team is filled out with random players from the internet. As the match launches and we’re taken to an outdoor skating rink somewhere in the snowy mountains, I feel a slight touch of anxiety in my stomach. These are my friends, after all. It’s one thing to embarrass yourself with a poor performance in front of strangers but if I screw up here, I’m sure I’ll be doomed to listen to glee-filled accounts of my glorious failures in the office for the months, if not years to come. I am determined to not mess things up.

And surprisingly, things go pretty well! We lose our first match but it’s a close one and, more importantly, a fun one. The ones multiplayer plays just like Pro Am, with every player on our team marked with a color-coded circle. I’m blue, Kato is green, and so on and so forth. It takes a few minutes for my eyes to adjust to all the colors swirling about but when I do, I play pretty decently according to my coworkers. They are polite, cheering me on when I pull off a pass or slam an opponent into a wall, and they’re reassuring when I make an obvious blunder, like slapping a puck directly into an opponent’s stick.

Voice chat adds a whole new layer of frenzy to the already chaotic game as well as enjoyment. The constant influx of pass requests as well as reactionary comments to players getting in fights, penalties called, or shots on the goal add another layer of constant engagement that’s missing from playing against A.I. foes. We end up losing by a point (and the next game by several points) but overall, that doesn’t matter. The social dynamics combined with the frantic energy of the sport makes this scenario one of the most enjoyable bits of NHL 19 I’ve played so far. I even leave our matches feeling like I did my part in contributing instead of falling over myself every which way.

There might just be hope for me yet.

Join me next time as I return to confront my old nemesis: Franchise mode.

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Far Cry 5 launched last year to divisive reactions. Count me among those who flat-out did not care for the game. The series’ strong gunplay and sturdy progression system remained, but years of chasing after Vaas’ brand of villainy and edgy storytelling made Far Cry 5’s narrative nearly unbearable.  The attempts to balance wacky shenanigans with a grim story about cults and apocalypse fever were an absolute failure. In one scene, you’d be listening to dude in a man-bun recycling 50 different the-end-is-nigh monologues. In another, you’d be hunting bulls so you could chop off their testicles for a barbecue. It all just mixed like oil and water, resulting in one of the weakest entries in the series.

So you can probably imagine my own surprise at discovering that I love Far Cry 5’s sequel, New Dawn. I’ve been playing the game nearly non-stop since it released last Friday, mostly because I needed a colorful palate cleanse after the great-but-grimy Metro Exodus. What I love about New Dawn so much is that it gets rid of all the unnecessary crap that brought Far Cry 5 down. There is a story with stakes, but it never tries to push its way ahead of Far Cry’s brand of colorful, emergent violence. Whereas setting a bear on fire in an enemy camp and then watching it chew through foes felt too slapstick before, here it feels perfect for the tone. And yeah, New Dawn has another pair of Villains Who Monologue, but they’re mercifully brief – sidelined so that you can pursue what makes New Dawn (and the rest of the series) so fun.

Since the third entry, the Far Cry series has had, by my measure, one of the best progression systems in games. Becoming more powerful by overtaking enemy outposts never gets old. New Dawn’s version of this setup has you taking these outposts to earn resources that you use to craft weapons, vehicles, and upgrade your home base. You can also recycle these outposts to fill them with stronger foes. If you manage to take the outpost again, you get even more resources. New Dawn also introduces expeditions, which are standalone levels where you fly to a remote location (like Alcatraz or a theme park in the Bayou) to retrieve a package of goods from the enemy and make your way a helicopter extraction point as endless waves of foes descend upon you.

The variety of choices you have at your disposal means that taking the same outpost a second time can result in an entirely different moment-to-moment story. In the first run, you might just rush in with an assault rifle, blasting every foe you see Rambo style. However, on the second, you might trap all the alarms to explode when enemies use them and then purposely cause some noise, tricking foes into obliterating themselves as you watch, cackling. And in another, you might just throw some bait into the middle of the outpost, let the wolves and cheetahs do your work, and then clean up the survivors. Or you can just snipe from afar with armor-piercing rounds. There’s just so much entertaining mayhem to be had here, especially when you take advantage of New Dawn’s lively arsenal.

Though it might not have as many memorable weapons as Blood Dragon, New Dawn’s assortment of weapons are both powerful and hilarious. The first gun you get in the game is a launcher that fires homing buzzsaws capable of silently killing foes. Not bad for an introduction, eh? Beyond that, you’ve also got a shovel with nails pounded into it, several overpowered bows, assault rifles and pistols that use nylon bags and rubber bands as silencers, flamethrowers, throwing knives, and a rifle with a screwdriver tied around the barrel as a makeshift bayonet. It’s all kooky and ties into New Dawn’s colorful take on the end of the world.

Few games have loops that I get sucked into enough to do repeatedly: Assassin’s Creed IV’s pirating mechanics, MGS V’s camp infiltrations, and the glorious art of killing nazis in Wolfenstein.  On a similar note, New Dawn’s expeditions and outpost activities are a great combination of tactical gameplay and wacky violence to the point that I can just keep doing them over and over. I’ve sunk a lot of hours into doing every iteration of the expedition missions and outpost stuff, and I’m still going back on sheer entertainment value alone, ignoring the story in favor of continuously riding that loop.

I’m not saying that New Dawn is a perfect or even amazing game (in fact, I agree with a lot of fellow editor Jeff Marchiafava’s review). However, I love that New Dawn takes the elements that make the series so enjoyable and just boils it down to those essentials, minimizing the annoying stuff like awful villains  and overbearing narrative. To me, Far Cry has always been one of those series that is about the moments the player creates with the tools given to them and I think New Dawn’s minimal approach makes it one of the best showcases of that and is worth giving a chance, especially if Far Cry 5 bummed you out.

For more on Far Cry New Dawn, check out these tips here.

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Metro has always flirted with difficult moral choices and consequences. Never to the extent of Mass Effect’s branching setup but both 2033 and Last Light offered endings that depended on player’s actions at critical moments during the campaign. Exodus does the same. However, earning either the good or bad ending is more about your moment-to-moment playstyle than critical choices this go round.

The easiest, guaranteed way to get the good ending in Exodus is knock people out when you’re sneaking  around and don’t kill indiscriminately. That doesn’t mean you have to avoid firefights or do a pacifist playthrough (I earned over 500 kills and still got the good ending) but when enemies surrender, don’t kill them. During certain missions, characters will ask you not to kill certain people, so don’t kill those people!  Also, sometimes characters in your party will give you quests (like finding a guitar in the wasteland). Do all of this and congrats, the good ending is all yours.

If you want the bad ending, just do the opposite. Be a real monster and kill everyone you come across. Never do a quest for anyone. Presto: the bad ending is all yours. You’ll know you’re on the path to this ending if your compatriots complain to you or even attempt to leave your group. If your karma is low enough, sometimes you can lose people from the group, so keep that in mind as well.

For more on Metro Exodus, check out our review, tips, and feature on why Metro is gaming’s most interesting post-apocalypse.

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When Fallout 76 released earlier this year, I gave it a fair shot. Like many, I tuned out of the game after playing a few hours. However, I didn’t quit because of bugs or because I thought the gameplay was bad. Instead, I was just tired of Fallout’s take on the end of the world. After several games of unclimbable rocky terrain, bombed out buildings filled with burnt books and skeletons, and sassy writing, I was just exhausted of the setup. Sure, Fallout’s gameplay has shifted many times over the past two decades, but its tone and view of people in general hasn’t.

My thoughts kept drifting back to Fallout this past week while playing Metro Exodus, the third installment in a series of games about people living in Moscow’s subway after a nuclear doomsday covers the city in fatal levels of radiation. The first two games followed the journey of Artyom, a citizen of the underground society who gets caught up in wars between the underground factions that have cropped up over the years, including a “Fourth Riech” and the various remnants of Russia’s government. If you weren’t navigating tunnels filled with Nazis that wanted to slit your throat, you were on the surface, wandering the streets of the city fending off predatory mutants. The third game, Exodus, takes Artyom and a group of loved ones across the open terrain of Russia in a train as they search for a new life, hopefully escaping the darkness of the metro at last.

What I’ve always loved about Metro is its commitment to its fiction, keeping true to the tone of its setting as well as supporting that fiction through novel gameplay mechanics. In the first two games, bullets are not just ammo but also function as currency, letting you trade them for weapons or precious health kits. This means you have to approach every combat encounter carefully. Can you really afford to go gung-ho when every bullet in your arsenal is literally a dollar? You also have to maintain your radiation-blocking gas mask with filters that deteriorate over time, meaning you’re constantly searching them out in the darkest parts of tunnels or trading for them. If your gas mask gets damaged, you have to manually tape over the crack in a darkly humorous display of DIYism. As Metro takes place in dark tunnels, you also have a headlamp you have to charge constantly as you proceed through the first two games.

A lot of this might sound like a chore. However, Metro’s flirtations with realism result in something tense and fascinating. Some of the fondest moments in gaming I’ve had over the past few years have occurred in Metro’s tunnels, where I crawled through ventilation shafts and stepped through corpse-strewed stations with only a few throwing knives, a broken mask, and a pistol with two rounds in it to keep me alive. The tension is palpable, especially when your headlamp starts to flicker and you have to render yourself defenseless to recharge it for a few seconds.

Metro’s approach to presenting its version of the apocalypse through narrative is equally as fascinating as the gameplay. Though Fallout, Rage, and its ilk have conversational NPCs in order to inject personality into a dead world, a lot of them are surprisingly stationary or move and stick to their schedules in slightly robotic fashion (like the inhabitants of Fallout 3’s Rivet City, always either sleeping in their bunks or taking up their post in the market). However, Metro’s embrace of Half-Life’s “Make The Player The Camera” storytelling tenants goes a long way in making me feel a part of that world.

The various stations of Metro are dark and cramped, with families often sleeping in grungy cardboard forts as barrel fires blaze next to them. In spite of that dinginess, hope pervades. Children run around, picking on one another and having fun, while men and women drink and try to find a little bit of light in the dark. As you walk through these stations, you can take in these scenes or you can rush past them, obsessed with the urgency of your quest to save the metro. However, even if you do that, the story goes to great lengths to build camaraderie within its core characters.

Shortly after the opening hours of the Metro 2033, Artyom meets Miller, the commander of the Spartan Order, a squad of elite troops dedicated to protecting the people of the metro. The two don’t hit it off at all. However, as the series goes on, Artyom and Miller form a relationship of begrudging respect, especially after Artyom falls in love with Anna, Miller’s daughter. Likewise, The Spartan Order comes to respect Artyom after seeing his bravery on multiple occasions. The Spartan Order’s cast of characters comes to depend on one another and bask in their collective emotional warmth to stay alive in even the bleakest times. Though there are many aspects of Metro’s narrative and voice-acting (or lack thereof) that are stilted, it gets the most important thing right: the series gives us people stranded in the darkness seeking a way out, people who are believable and worth rooting for. Exodus charts the path to that escape.

I was skeptical when 4A Games revealed that Exodus was going to be more open-worldish. After all, the things I liked about Metro were that it was different from the majority of post-apocalyptic games, rejecting barren sprawl and fetch quests for tight action-packed gameplay and pinpoint narrative focus. I worried that the series might finally be lost to the trend of generator-spewed emergent stories instead of continuing to embrace its own identity. Luckily that was not the case. Yes, Exodus is bigger, but the things that make Metro so lovably unique are still retained and even blown-out.

Exodus bears down on the character-driven storytelling from the previous games, taking a page from Wolfenstein’s book and creating a hub space where you can check in on your characters and listen to them pour forth their anxieties and hopes about the world while you sit back and listen. These moments are basically the glue of the entire Exodus experience, letting you really become invested in who these people are. Will Stepan’s affection for hitchhiker Katya result in something other than friendship? Will Miller get over his resentment of you leading everyone out of Moscow? Small dramas and moments of levity unfold when you’re in the hub, reminding you that there is a reason for you to be doing whatever is you’re doing when you’re out and about in Exodus’ regions.

Speaking of the regions, they’re rad. A big problem with post-apocalyptic games is that they tend to all look the same: barren, rocky environments filled with dilapidated houses.  This is not always true, of course. The Last of Us, another game that separates its levels into seasons, also has rich and varied environments. However, every one of Exodus’ maps feels distinct from one another in a way that’s exciting. It’s not just a matter of the desert locale being a change of pace from the wintery river locale. Every location has its own faction that you have to contend with, like the weirdos who worship a fish god. These folks are pretty harmless in the long run, and how you handle them – through brute force or evasion – will change your relationship with everyone else in the region as well. Every location responds to your actions in a way that feels fluid. If you develop a reputation for sparing people, more enemies will surrender to you during combat. If you’re a monster, that might have consequences, from one of your crew members saying something in disapproval to one of them paying the price for your bloodthirst.

Metro Exodus feels alive in a way that most of its post-apocalyptic siblings don’t, and that’s because it doesn’t settle for giving a player a post-apocalyptic sandbox. Metro instead crafts its own tale about despair and hope while giving players ample flexibility to find entertainment within that space. The world might be dingy and overcast, but its heart beats with the kind of excitement, innovation, and heartfelt storytelling that more games need to have.

For more on Metro Exodus, check out our review for the game as well as some tips to help you survive the journey.

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Nintendo and Intelligent Systems finally provided some concrete details about the upcoming Fire Emblem entry, Three Houses, during the latest Nintendo Direct. A lot of interesting stuff was revealed, but arguably the biggest tidbit of info is the July 26 release date. Here is the most notable information we gleaned from the presentation.

The Game Is Harry Potter As Hell
Back when Nintendo revealed Three Houses, the fact it took place at a school and had its student body separated into houses resulted in many people noticing similarities between the game and the popular Harry Potter franchise. The latest video has only doubled down on those similarities. As a professor at the Officer’s Academy, you training your students with exercises and exams while building your relationship with them as their teacher. Interiors for the academy show in the Direct echo the stone design castle of Hogwarts as well.

New Continent, New Characters
Three Houses takes place on the continent of Fódlan, which is divided into three kingdoms: Adrestian, Faerghus, and Leicester. All the kingdoms live in relative harmony and send their high-born children to the monastery of Garreg Mach. We don’t know much about the plot beyond that setup and you taking the role of a professor at that academy. However, given Fire Emblem’s fondness for exploring violent and philosophical divisions between kingdoms, we wouldn’t be surprised to see these three  eventually warring with one another.

Permadeath Is Likely Returning
During the presentation, Nintendo stated that “Whether your students live or die will depend on your leadership.” There has been no explicit outlining of how permadeath will work (or even if it will feature in the game), but given the series’ history that statement seems to imply it will. Every Fire Emblem since Awakening has also had the option to turn off permadeath as well, so we might see that, too.

You Choose Between Three Factions
Each of the three houses (Black Eagles, Blue Lions, and Golden Deer) of the academy are tied to one of the kingdoms on Fódlan’s continent (respectively: Adrestian, Faerghus, Leicester).  During the game, you choose to lead the education for one of the houses, caring for all the students under that house banner, including the heir apparent for the kingdom.

The School Is Packed
While fans might be nervous that the school setting will result in fewer units to use on the battlefield and characters to get to know, the Direct briefly mentioned: “There are many students to meet, each with their own personality and skills.” 

You Are Actually Teaching During The Game
Your role as a professor isn’t just a title. The gameplay featured during the Direct showed the player able to plan and carry out lessons, as well as tutor students one-on-one. They can even give exams.

You Can Select Your Protagonist’s Gender
As was the case with Awakening and Fates, you have the opportunity to select your main character’s gender at the beginning of the campaign.

No Word On Whether Or Not Relationships Return
Both Awakening and Fates allowed players to have members in their armies date one another and even produce offspring. Given that this entry takes place in a school setting, that premise might be difficult, and neither Nintendo nor Intelligent Systems have said anything about that feature yet.

Battle Systems Are Being Tweaked 
Instead of single units moving across the battlefield, per series norm, units will often have battalions troops at their back to support them during battle. No word yet on how that affects stats during battle.

There’s A Lot More 3D This Go Round
Fates and Awakening featured 3D models on the battlefield, sure, but in the quieter moments in your home base, you were mostly talking to character portraits in traditional visual-novel style. However, you’re able to roam around Garreg Mach as a 3D character speaking to other 3D characters in Three Houses. The models are also a big improvement over the previous games, with them actually having feet and detailed faces.

The Supernatural Is Involved Once Again
It just wouldn’t be Fire Emblem without fantastical elements. The series has always danced with fantasy, focusing on necromancers, dragons, and mages. Three Houses has its own share of the fantastical, with spell-casting powers on display during the direct as well as a mysterious girl named Sothis appearing in your main character’s visions.

For more on Fire Emblem: Three Houses, head here.

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