Recent reviews by Willy A. Jeep

Big Mountain Research Facility. A name with little meaning in the Mojave Wasteland, but one renowned in the Old World. Once home to the brightest scientific minds of pre-war America, Big Mountain was at the center of research and development efforts throughout the Resource Wars, in league with the likes of West-Tek, General Atomics, and RobCo. At its heart was the Think Tank, a collective of six chief scientists and engineers with one unified goal - winning the war. With government contracts plenty and billions of dollars flowing through its complex, Big Mountain became a veritable garden of scientific advancement and discovery in the last few years of the Old World, creating such space-age wonders as nanomachine vending consoles, police cyberdogs, and the invaluable Auto-Doc.

Then, on October 23rd, 2077, the Great War came, and Big Mountain fell quiet. Having failed to accomplish its goal, the vast complex sat dormant, aimless, abandoned far from what little civilization remained in the post-nuclear wasteland of the American Southwest. But like so many Old World government facilities, Big Mountain wasn't about to give up its secrets to curious scavengers without a final fight. Force fields remained at the perimeter, robotic security patrolled the barren expanse, and an ominous purple glow hung in the sky above the facility. Any overeager prospector or ignorant wastelander who wandered too close would simply disappear within, forever gone to the Big MT.

With time, the memory of what Big Mountain had been and what it had done for the country faded, and in its place was born the Big Empty, a place of folklore and superstition among denizens of the Mojave Wasteland and New California Republic. A mysterious stretch of wasteland where, without explanation, people would vanish without a trace. No tribals claimed the territory, no evidence of Enclave or Brotherhood activity marked the desert, and nothing seemed to live there. The Big Empty was just that - nothingness, an unknowable space devoid of anything of interest, and that was for the best.

But the truth is, Big Mountain never did sleep. In secret, the Think Tank had continued their research, no longer in an effort to win a war since passed, but in the pursuit of science and science alone. Memory of their former goals, lives, and the Old World altogether fading, the last of the 21st century's brightest minds took on the New World laid before them. For two hundred years, Big Mountain has continued its work without pause. Automated laboratories running experiments unchecked, artificial intelligences controlling entire facilities once overseen by dozens of researchers, and the remains of unfortunate test subjects lay sprinkled throughout. Subjects which more than resemble those overeager prospectors and ignorant wastelanders last seen making their way towards the Big Empty. Still, the experiments march on, perpetually seeking answers to the endless questions of the Think Tank, and they are in desperate need of new test subjects.

Like a lightbulb flashing into brilliance for the first time, science can seem like it moves with huge, sudden strides. In reality, science is a long, steady progression into the future. Questions, always driving us to find answers. But will you find the answers you're looking for in the Big Empty, or will you find that, like the Think Tank, you were asking the wrong questions all along?

- - -

Old World Blues, the feeling of nostalgia that ignites sorrow and regret in your heart for times passed, which blinds you to the present around you and the future your actions now shape. Hard to escape the Blues, even for the smartest minds.

Old World Blues is the third major DLC for Fallout: New Vegas, and possibly the most lauded of the four. Transported to a mysterious pre-war research facility known as Big Mountain then dissected and "lobotomized" by its automated medical equipment, you, the Courier, come face-to-face with the Think Tank, a collective of transhuman scientists who are besieged by a former colleague, Doctor Mobius, and held hostage in their laboratory. Tasked with finding equipment that will somehow both save the Think Tank from Mobius' evil plan and return your heart, spine, and brain to their rightful places in your body, you will have to fight the atomic horrors which populate Big Mountain, participate in space age scientific experiments of various lethalities, and uncover the nefarious deeds of the minds who call the Big Empty home.

Perhaps the most freeform DLC, Old World Blues features open-world gameplay with no limitation on carry weight, the only real restriction of is that the player must complete its story before being allowed to leave its worldspace. Otherwise, gameplay is similar to the base game. Plenty of conversations to have with the cast of NPCs, lots of exploration to get lost in, and various enemies to keep combat interesting and challenging even for late-game characters. Hardcore players might have a somewhat difficult time finding food in the Big Empty as compared to the Mojave, but it's no Sierra Madre.

The Big Empty worldspace is something of a mess, in a very intentional way. It's largely suggested through dialogue that the entire crater has been ripped apart by multiple experiments, and this gives the whole area an otherworldly vibe. That said, it's an incredibly varied, somewhat confusing area to traverse, with plenty of landmarks to navigate by. Far more freeform than the Sierra Madre but more guided than Zion, as the player is given a number of quests which will direct them to many of the locations. The locations are all rather varied, too, even if none of them are particularly expansive. Could easily take a dozen hours just to explore everywhere in the Big Empty, and a few more to find all its secrets.

New gear and items are plentiful and interesting in Old World Blues. In contrast from its largely technological atmosphere, the weapons of this DLC lean towards Melee and Unarmed, but its ranged weapons also warrant attention, especially the Sonic Emitter, which is a key item throughout Old World Blues, and the K9000 Cyberdog Gun, which is strange whichever way you look at it. Most notably for attire, the Stealth Suit is a unique, if potentially irritating, set of armour which automatically heals and medicates the Courier.

Stop reading now if you don't want mild spoilers! Easily, the best quality of Old World Blues is its writing. Like other DLC, there's plenty of reading between the lines to be done, and the story is really quite bittersweet, but on the surface the writing is a comedic, absurd smorgasbord of campy, B-movie nonsense and outright adult humor. Talking toasters threaten to destroy the world while brains in jars get off to watching people breathe, memories of betrayal and remorse intertwine with stories of friendship and care, and all the while announcements about INTELLIGENCE-STEALING ROBOSCORPIONS and BALL-LOVING JOCKS echo across the crater. Old World Blues also links the disparate stories of Dead Money and Lonesome Road, which brings some semblance of continuity to these three DLC and helps tie them to the base game.

The themes of Old World Blues are many and varied. Primarily, it's of lost and found humanity, the perils of nostalgia, and of friendship. While the surface is plastered with this zany scientific characterization, science is more of a stand-in for the pursuit of humanity, to make things better in the future for you and everybody you love. To be caught in the past, to lose sight of your goal, and to not see what you already have, those are the dangers of the Big Empty, not the roboscorpions.

That's Old World Blues. You can have the blues for the past, or you can recognize the past is the blues. Let it encourage you to make the future better, and have New World Hope.

TL;DR If you like New Vegas, get Old World Blues. Just don't stay up too late watching that Midnight Science Fiction Feature!

Zion National Park, Utah, Four States Commonwealth. An idyllic canyon hewn from the Navajo Sandstone by the Virgin River. First inhabited by native tribals thousands of years before the war, the Old World forerunners of the New Canaanites gave the canyon its name and called it their home for a time. With fresh water, lush foliage, and ripe game, Zion formed an immense oasis in the desert, a place of plenty and of peace, untouched by modern civilization and the troubles of man.

By the late twenty-first century, the government of pre-war America had reclaimed Zion under the guise of a National Park. Its natural beauty lured civilization-weary naturalists and tourists, an escape from the misery of rationing during the Resource Wars and the ever-looming threat of global thermonuclear war, only to trap them in allotted campgrounds and force upon them trinkets and souvenirs. Congested highways cut through the Colorado Plateau to feed crowded parking lots where bighorn sheep once grazed, sacred caves in the canyon walls brimmed with campers' litter and government machinery in place of the bones of ancients which had previously laid there, and discarded appliances, car parts, furniture, et cetera clogged and polluted the thousand-year-filtered waters of Zion.

But man's greatest accomplishment saw an end to the ruse. The Great War destroyed modern civilization, cities of tens of millions obliterated in minutes, and its only survivors did so in great underground Vaults, or on the fringes of the developed world. For beyond the reaches of Salt Lake City, Utah was mostly spared, and Zion was virtually untouched. With time, the remaining vestiges of the Old World which persisted in the canyon were claimed by its natural forces, withering into dust or becoming one with the weathered stones and flowering datura. Mankind, more wont to survive than our creations, followed the Virgin back to Zion in the years after the war, tracing their forerunners' steps from centuries past. Tribes formed in the reflection of their ancestors, learning from the land and those who plied it before, and Zion again became a place of peace and plenty, an oasis hidden from the shadow of a world which had rejected nature that laid beyond.

But another thing man is wont to do is make war. Even without power armour, strategic bombers, and the intercontinental ballistic missile, where man makes his home, another man will find a way to tear it down. The New Canaanites of northern Utah have been chased from their home by a tribe under the control of Caesar's Legion, missionaries finding shelter with the natives of the southern canyons, and now that tribe descends upon Zion. Their objective is to kill the Burned Man, the former second-in-command of the Legion, who has returned to his roots among the New Canaanites and whose presence now endangers all that walk the banks of the Virgin. Unbeknownst to the caravan companies of the New California Republic, who now march for Zion in search of New Canaan, they will soon fall into the middle of a conflict at the heart of the war for the Mojave, and one in the making for over four hundred years.

Walking into Zion, you're walking into history. But, like the Burned Man before you, will you be able to crawl out of that canyon and finally find your way back home?

- - -

"Honest Hearts produce honest actions." - Brigham Young

Honest Hearts is the second major DLC for Fallout: New Vegas, and potentially the weakest of the four. However, it is my personal favorite, but I'll attempt to remain as objective as necessary. Taking up a job offer with the Happy Trails Caravan Company on an expeditionary trip to find a route to New Canaan, Utah, you, the Courier, are dropped into a tribal war when your caravan is ambushed at the southern edge of Zion National Park. Introduced to the New Canaan missionaries acting as representatives of the native tribes, Joshua Graham and Daniel, you learn you must scour the largely pristine canyon for supplies to quash the growing conflict and prepare for your trip back to the Mojave, proving yourself to the tribes and uncovering the secret history of Zion and its inhabitants along the way.

Unchanged largely from base New Vegas, the gameplay of Honest Hearts is only different in its mostly exploratory rather than combative or conversational loop. Zion is ripe with supplies and food items, so even after the player is limited to under 75 (or 100, depending on skills and perks) carry weight to travel to the canyon, there's little challenge in surviving for Hardcore players or the less prepared. Combat is uncommon and, despite some hard-hitting weapons carried by most hostile human characters, there's not much challenge to it. It's downright leisurely compared to Dead Money and Lonesome Road.

Zion, the worldspace itself, is by far my favorite of all the DLC. It's not immense, but it's a beautiful (for New Vegas' graphics, anyway) reprieve from the muddy brown of the Mojave, oppressive red of the Sierra Madre, sickly blue-purple of the Big Empty, and hostile orange of the Divide. A minuscule facsimile of the real-world Zion National Park, the worldspace of Honest Hearts is scenic, open, and mostly natural. Most interiors are caves, while the exterior space is only spottily marked by ruined pre-war structures. Exploration of Zion is left to player agency, and it rewards the player in turn. It doesn't take more than a few hours to scour the entire canyon, though, so it won't take even the most lazy player long.

In contrast to Dead Money, which is challenging and not so very rewarding with gear, Honest Hearts is a breeze with some of the best mid-to-late-game gear hidden throughout. The .45 Auto weapons pack a punch well into the late-game, Compliance Regulator laser pistol gives an interesting option for pacifist players, and the Survivalist's Rifle is a powerful carbine on par with some of New Vegas' best. Honest Hearts also boasts some of the best armour in the game, if you know where to look.

Stop reading now if you don't want mild spoilers! The story of Honest Hearts is, I think, its weakest point. Not to say it's bad, it's just largely bereft of dialogue and depth when compared to the other DLC. There are only a handful of major conversations, and while those are pretty good, the plot itself is lackluster. Mostly place-to-place errands that don't feel very substantial, even to a mid-game character. Particularly, this is where Honest Hearts' weakness and strength intersects, in that the most intriguing story is only revealed through thorough exploration and note-reading. Not a problem if you're patient, but if you just follow quest markers you'll be out of Zion in under five hours.

The themes of Honest Hearts seems to be redemption, of change, and of a respect for nature. It's laid out rather bare for the player to see, through dialogue and notes left by former inhabitants, in the world design of Zion National Park, and in the actions of its characters. Men making up for their past mistakes, changing of hearts among conflicted people, and the decaying elements of excess consumerism among the natural beauty of a lush river basin. There's also a heavy presence of religion, particularly Mormonism and Paganism, and the effects of these different beliefs interacting as well as guiding their believers, but I wouldn't call this the defining theme of Honest Hearts.

It's an old aphorism, one made by a questionable man, but maybe that makes it all the more worthy of consideration. Honest hearts produce honest actions. You make choices based on what you believe, good or bad, lie or truth, and it says more about you than anything you could ever say.

TL;DR Honest Hearts is my favorite DLC for New Vegas, but it's not for everybody who only causally likes New Vegas. If you're like me and enjoy getting lost in a dreamy vision of a historic National Park, then play it! And don't let the survivor's guilt get to you like it did Randall.

The Sierra Madre Resort. A wasteland legend. Forgotten in the mountains, untouched by the bombs, a reflection of the pre-war world at its height. Terracotta streets lined with luxurious Mission Art Deco apartments take leisurely, winding paths along the mountain side. Automated convenience services built into every structure provide all the necessities of daily life, and nanomachine vending consoles stand at every corner ready to fulfill every material need and desire for a pittance. Holographic servants sell the finest designer clothes and gourmet dishes in every shop while holographic security guards appear in a blink to keep the peace on every street, none ever needing rest or taking time off.

And at its heart, the Sierra Madre Casino. The grand vision of businessman Frederick Sinclair, borne of a utopian ideal based upon the fairness of gambling, a place of near self-sufficiency, where anybody could come to begin again, step from their former life, be on equal playing ground with all others who followed the call of the Sierra Madre. Its voice that of Vera Keyes, a Hollywood starlet and singer of some popularity in the last years of the Old World, and her image its public face. Towering above the resort at the mountain's peak, the casino appears as a sentinel of reinforced adobe, silently watching out across the range for any who have wandered wayward and now seek its many promises of comforts and riches.

But the Sierra Madre is a city haunted by the dead. Their voices echo distraught down its empty streets, their ghosts stalk its littered arcades, their last days playing out again and again in its electronic memory. A cloud of blood blankets the mountainside, billowing up out of artificial caverns, choking the sunlight from the sky above and the air from the lungs of all who live there. The remains of recent visitors, hapless wastelanders and obsessed prospectors alike, dot the resort at random, oxidizing more than rotting in its toxic atmosphere, surrounded by scrawled messages of remorse and greed.

And still, the casino stands quiet. Its doors locked as tight as any Vault, its windows absent of movement, its powerful spotlights unlit against the rusted and sunless sky. The Sierra Madre never opened, its grand gala event only hours too late to beat the bomb. For a brilliant fireworks display, fanfare in the streets, and a great showing of lights the casino waits, and all it takes is the tripping of the right switch, by the right man in the right place at the right time. Then, the Sierra Madre will welcome its first guests, and if they can survive its trials, can get into its vault, they will be the richest men in the wastes.

But getting there? That's not the hard part. It's letting go.

- - -

Dead Money. It's chips in the pot you can't get back. You've made your bet and folded your hand. Your loss.

Dead Money is also the title of the first major DLC for Fallout: New Vegas, and potentially the most divisive among players. Investigating a mysterious message being broadcast across the Mojave Wasteland, you, the Courier, are abducted and taken to a pre-war resort community, the Sierra Madre, surrounding its eponymous casino. A bomb collar has been locked around your neck, a means of control over you and others trapped in the Sierra Madre, by the central antagonist of the story, Father Elijah, a former Elder of the Brotherhood of Steel who is now bent on unlocking the casino vault. Your gear is left behind in the Mojave, so scavenging for gear and supplies is a major part of staying alive long enough to find the vault, and you must cooperate with a small group of characters to accomplish this goal, or else risk having your head blown into a thin red paste. Good luck!

Gameplay is largely similar to New Vegas, with the added caveat of having a much heavier focus on survival and scrounging materials. Being stripped of your loadout upon starting the DLC is a big, bitter pill to swallow, but if you're patient and exploratory, you'll likely have a full inventory of supplies by the time you enter the casino. Of particular note, there are vending machines all over the Sierra Madre which take the plentiful Poker Chips and provide a surplus of healing items, ammo, and other useful supplies, so you'll be visiting them often. The enemies - mostly "Ghost People", hazmat suit-wearing zombie-like enemies - are tough but slow-moving and don't output much damage alone, but they sometimes appear in groups and can really overwhelm you. More dangerous to your health are the world hazards of the Sierra Madre, pockets of the toxic red cloud which damage health quickly, and speakers or radios which interfere with the bomb collar's control signal and will cause it to detonate if you stand close to them for too long. The speakers especially are often hidden in places where players won't see them immediately, and only some can be destroyed, but they largely serve to encourage players to be patient and inspect an area rather than deny access to an area permanently. I've played through Dead Money in its entirety three times and in two of those playthroughs I never died, so it's entirely possible to navigate around these obstacles without falling victim to frustrating design.

The worldspace of the Sierra Madre is, I think, one of the nicest in New Vegas and its DLC. A charming mixture of Mission Revival and Art Deco styles, and it boasts a decent vertical element where the player can often avoid dangers by walking on rooftops or passing through buildings. That said, the map layout is somewhat confusing, made more frustrating by a largely undetailed and inaccurate Pip-Boy map, and the unified architectural style of everything can give you a bad case of deja vu, make you think you're somewhere new or somewhere you've been when it's the opposite case. But from an explorer's standpoint, it's very well detailed with lots of secrets to discover, and doesn't take too long to explore the entirety of.

There's honestly not a whole lot of new or interesting gear in the Sierra Madre, other than the infamous gold bars in the vault, but it offered a few weapons and other items which can compliment a mid-game loadout. The Holorifle, an Energy rifle, is the star of the show, but the Automatic Rifle and Police Pistol are fun throwbacks for Guns users, and there's a few new and somewhat unique Melee and Unarmed weapons, too.

If you don't want any mild plot or theme spoilers, stop reading now! Dead Money's story is, like the other DLC for New Vegas, multilayered, and its themes are many and muddled together. Despite its relative lack of characters and length of only a dozen hours or so, there's a wealth of dialogue and written backstory in Dead Money. Characters are largely intertwined in other plots from within the DLC and the main game, and the story of the Sierra Madre which underlies the events happening in the Courier's presence is revealed mostly through player exploration and interpretation.

In theme, Dead Money is particularly convoluted. On its surface, it's about greed, obsession, and betrayal. Easily understood is its message of greed's evil, to let go. But paying attention to the actions of each character, alive and dead, and giving some thought about the motifs heard throughout its story, Dead Money becomes more of a love story than anything. The pursuits of each character relate to it. Sinclair building an entire city for the woman he loved, Christine seeking out he who stole her love from her, Dean never knowing love and hating Sinclair for it, Dog/God seeking and granting love to himself. That's what the key phrase of Dead Money means - It's not hard to find love, but it's hard to let go.

That's Dead Money. You knew you had a losing hand, and rather than wager more, you let it go. You can win another day.

TL;DR I really enjoyed Dead Money. It's not the best DLC, but it's worth your time if you liked the main game. Just be patient, and don't lose your head!

The neon-soaked streets of Japanada's largest city, Torontokyo, stretch out beyond the comfortable wireframe walls of your room. Lurking in the most run-down cyberslums and the tallest thermal pastescrapers alike are the lackeys of Robochev, Doctor Sbaitso, and the Antagonist. Your mission, since you must choose to accept it, is to infiltrate their partition and, by any means unnecessary, decrypt the plans of this ethnically diverse cast of anthropomorphic machine intelligences.

It's time to take your Missionoyl and leave this Chinese room, Polyblank. The fate of the unimatrix is in your cardboard cut-out hands. This message will turn into a dagwood sandwich in five seconds.


Jazzpunk is a midcentury-and-cyberpunk styled comedy adventure game set in an over-the-top, surreal world of computer love, cultural lampooning, and tongue-in-cheek dialogue. It's not so much a game as it is an experience, an interactive exploration of niche interest and esoteric humor. It's a place where grin-inducing jokes have become reality, and what little remains of the old reality is all the stranger for it. It's a love letter for a long since passed culture, muddled and mutated through fifty years of retrospect.

If you're looking for a game to play, this isn't really that. It's a funny, unchallenging, interactive walking simulator where you chase pigeons, fight automobiles, and are shouted at by the ghost of Hunter S. Thompson. Archival footage and audio of midcentury computer systems punctuated by the strange ramblings of homeless men and valley girls follow you where ever you go, and obscure references to obsolete technology run concurrent to semi-modern gamer injokes.

Jazzpunk is a game with a very small audience who will understand everything it has to say, but with how much it does have, there's probably something in it for everybody. If you have a broad sense of humor, if you like the surreal, if you like Johnny Mnemonic, you'll probably really enjoy Jazzpunk.

I recommend getting it on sale, because $15 USD is a bit pricey for the package, but I really do recommend it, from the bottom of my artificial kidney.

The year, 1932. Mankind has taken the reigns from nature and become master of the Earth in only a century. Gasoline-powered automobiles line the streets, traincars powered by overhead electrified wires or huge water boilers carry people from city-to-city at speeds beyond any horse, and the first airlines are taking flight around the globe.

The Age of Man has dawned, it reflects in all that they do. Cities grow upwards to the Skylines, towers scrape the heavens, and an empowering style manifests in these glass-and-rebar, stone-and-steel colossi - Art Deco.


This DLC for Cities: Skylines adds in-total 15 new structures to the game enviornment, of Art Deco or similar architectural style. 3 buildable by the player, the rest growables that will appear in zoned areas. I must warn that I'm a fan of this particular style of art, but I'll try to keep it objective.

Price - High for such few items to be added, just like most of the DLC for this game. My gut says it should be about 3 USD, not 5.

Quality - Rather fitting for the game, not too shabby but not too amazing. The growables suffer the most, while the buildables are more fine-tuned.

Content - Plenty great if you're planning on building an early/mid 20th century period city, or if you just want to spice up the architectural style found in your digital land of overflowing sewage. Like I said, I'm a big fan of Deco, so it's welcome.

Now a note about the standing that this is mod-quality and should not be paid content:

It's no secret that we all lived through the Great Paid Mods Fiasco of 2015. It was a dark week in our history here on Steam, and many were divided and at arms, and not all of era's modders survived to see the other side. The landscape of Skyrim modding remains scarred to this day.

Cities: Skylines never suffered this tragedy, however many might see this as an affront on the freedom of mods once again. Shroomblaze (Matt Crux, creator of this content) has produced free mods on the Workshop for nearly as long as Skylines has been claiming it's place atop the city builder/simulator kingdom. None of those are monetized, all free. This pack is separate in total from his mods, but is a way of him receiving compensation from his work.

This is not to say that other modders might lay down their tools and switch to only producing paid content - that happens naturally. An artist showcases their work - music, paint, poem - and perchance is discovered by a publisher to give their hobby profession. It's a threat to the consumer, but a boon to the producer.

Until there comes again a time that mods are converted to payment, this kind of thing is no threat to that world. But the boundaries are set for war should that happen once again, and it probably will.

Out of time, robbed of the ones they love, and in an unfamiliar world, what would you do?

War, War Never Changes.
It's been two-hundred and ten years since that fateful day in late October, 2077, when the bombs flew and fell upon all men alike. One-hundred and twenty-six years since the Vault Dweller left V13. Forty-five years since the Chosen One set out to save Arroyo. Ten since the Lone Wanderer chased after their father out of V101. Six since the Courier was shot. 2287 is the year you emerge from 111, but... It seems like only yesterday, even just hours ago... you were happily living in Sanctuary Hills, and these other heroes had yet to be born.

You're the Sole Survivor of Vault 111. You're the only intact human from before the Great War. Your country, home, friends, and family have all been taken from you.

And You're Gonna Get Them Back, No Matter The Odds.

- -

OK, so, first thing's first! Where does Fallout 4 stand in my opinions of the Fallout series?

#1. Fallout: New Vegas

#2. Fallout

#3. Fallout 4

#4. Fallout 2

#5. Fallout 3

#6. The others...

That being said, this review is from a fan's perspective, based on Fallout 4's improvement since Fallout 3, which is a lot, but certainly not as fluid as even Bioshock Infinite, though more open and with a layer of RPG.

Fallout 4! Yes! It's here! After seven years of waiting since Fallout 3, and five since New Vegas, Bethesda has welcomed us home to the Boston wasteland - known locally as the Commonwealth - and into the new age of Fallout.

I'll be filling this out with story and character information and evaluation later, but I'm only just getting to Boston at the time of writing, so I'm going to mention my experiences so far with the new engine, gunplay, RPG elements, performance, and all-new base building. Oh, and if I like it or not!

First, the positives! Because in a world so dark, the best should come first, eh?

The engine, Creation, has definitely improved since Skyrim - it's first appearance - with the full advantage of recent hardware and software. In all of my hours so far, it hasn't crashed, unlike my original running of Skyrim, which had problems as soon as I was done with the tutorial. The movement and dynamics of objects, lighting, and people feels much more realistic from previous Fallout titles, but slightly sluggish as it was in Skyrim. Overall, an improvement!

Gunplay! Yes! No longer for the noble or the swampfolk! This is probably the most astoundingly welcomed revision since Fallout 3, with full customization, in-depth statistics, recoil, and great new animations. Ammo has become much rarer, too! Enemies take cover! Now, coming at this from a contemporary POV, none of this is surprising, but for Fallout, it's stunning. Minor problem people have, though, is the strange omission of holstered weapon models, which has no answer.

Now, here's one that many people will hark on about. The RP of RPG. It's good in Fallout 4, but it's the most hurt of all the positives of this game, in my eyes. While I have no exact hatred of the voice acted player (and the actors did really good jobs!), it certainly removes me from being able to paste my own ideas of character on. Can still choose options, of course, but the voice takes out the oh-so-important player-definition. But the good! The good! The conversation options, while the text is limited, are straightforward and work very much the same way Fallout 3's skill-percentage check functioned, but color-coded.

More to RPG, of course, and that's the player's own statistical definition! SPECIAL, Fallout's own character system, returns. However, as many have noticed, Skills are gone as they were. Perks now double as bonuses and take the roll of skills, having multi-ranked perks that increase similarly to the 'tiers' of old skills. First level Locksmith perk gets the player into average locks, just as a 25 Lockpick skill would get the player into the equivalent lock. Oh! And unlike Skyrim, perks can be taken in any order, even if they're laid out in such a way as to suggest otherwise.

Still in RPG, outside of the player, NPCs are VERY VERY GOOD! They feel like people: most have varied voice actors (some easily recognizable as VOs from Skyrim and Fallout 3), wear very different clothing, and they're all written as Bethesda likes to do: exaggerated for uniqueness. And the companions! In comparison to Fallout 3, the followers of 4 are heaven sent. There's a slightly strange Tell Tale-like 'remember that' system involved, but companions all have very well done characterization and writing, not to mention interesting combat styles and functions. Dogmeat has tricks and fetch abilities, while Codsworth has an ability to generate fresh water, for examples.

BASE BUILDING! While many have heralded the death of the Minecraft clone, they keep a-coming, and people eat it all up. Now, in the world of Fallout, who hasn't tried to build their own place? Even the original Vault Dweller founded his own town! The Courier of New Vegas helped settled the Divide before... well, that's an old story. But, now, the Sole Survivor can get their hands dirty while you play as them! Pick up all sorts of neat junk in the Commonwealth, smash it all up with a hammer (then break the hammer) and get the parts to make more junk! Feed people, provide water, construct homes either pre-fab or out of random walls and flooring! It's really a cool system, and it gives a real reason to scavenge for more loot. Only problems here is slow display image loadtime.

Now, for the less positive things, because it's only fair - and right - to mention them.

The Story. Wah-wah, yeah, it's a pile of ick so high you'd drown before making it to the top. In reality, the quests are interesting up until one called 'Dangerous Minds' ends. After that, and when the Institute and Brotherhood of Steel get involved, quests become tedious and the drive of the story stalls. A big reveal comes to light shortly thereafter, and that only worsens the problem. And, no spoilers, the ending(s) are... lackluster. The game really does just end, and there's no closure. Unlike New Vegas, the game fails to make the player feel they've done anything, similar to Skyrim's but... less epic.

Bugs! Like I said above, the engine has improved greatly, but still has some quirks. If you're coming from Skyrim, you might remember some of these. The few I've seen are stuck subtitles, NPCs shooting into the air before falling to their deaths, and that classic AI stall where an NPC will stop-and-teleport rather than walk. They're not game breaking like some bugs have been in the past, especially with older Fallouts (a still-standing issue in Fallout 1 prevents a canon ending from happening!), so they're not all that much of a problem.

And performance. Yeah, this falls into negative for reasons of, ahem, lack of improvement. Stuttering, odd freezes upon loading, and borked settings make all of this a pain. Though, looking at how much has gone into the world, like open-air houses, it's no wonder it has some problems. To be honest, some of this stuff could easily be totally understandable release issues, but it stands for now. Beware if you're on a low-end computer! It eats babies!

All in all, I am very much enjoying Fallout 4. It's been an absolute blast to experience, and the opening was probably Bethesda's finest to date. Like I said before, this is a bit of a first-glance review, so there won't be a numerical rating. Just a quick recommendation for people who are tolerant towards problems, and understanding towards story.

Ok, first, I have to say: Why don't you already have this game? And secondly, if you do own the game and are just reading the reviews for chuckles, hello!

The city of Los Santos lays spread out in a low-lying basin of southern San Andreas along the Pacific Ocean. Smog-ridden streets are ripe with crime, from small-time drug dealing to upscale corportate and even intragovernment illegality. The city wastes away in a unique bath of bitterness, regret, paranoia, fear, and loathing.

This is where the action film was born. The romance. The drama. The tragedy. And this is where they've all come to die.


GTA V and Online make up the 15th/16th installment of the GTA series that began back in 1997. Holding many records, awards, and controversies, GTA is no stranger to anybody anywhere near the gaming culture.

There's no real backstory or major inter-game plots that are need-to-know. Pick any title up and go, it'll all unfold itself quickly. GTA V is no different.

Gameplay

The open-world is massive and fun to explore, though not with the interactability of some other popular open-world titles. Plenty of area to drive, fly, and boat around in.

Vehicle handling is weighty but not too uncontrollable, unlike previous GTA installments. Each vehicle handles differently depending on build - bigger cars are slower in speed and steering response, some bikes can't do wheelies, high-wing planes handle differently from low-wings. Mods can be purchased for smaller vehicles that improve statistics, as well as cosmetics.

Gunplay is satisfying, if a little finnicky to get used to. Drawing and cover-based fire are sluggish, aiming can be bothersome when switching between different weapons. Plenty of variety in weapon selection, though, and the way it's handled is more streamlined than previous GTAs. There's a central weapon wheel and the player may carry any weapons they own at all times.

Player movement can feel sluggish, weighty. Moving a player character can be a real chore at times due to the way the game reacts so snappily to input, but is slow on actual movement. Combat rolls and climbing over objects of reasonable height make for fun exploration and interesting tactics.

Story

GTA V's story is solid. Three protagonists, all controlled at will by the player, play as major agents in criminal doings all around Los Santos and Blaine County. Heists that can be planned are a high point, while there are plenty of diversions of both legal and illegal varieties available beyond the main plot. It can grow weary at times, like most Rockstar titles, in the way each character is led around and forced into plenty of situations that just aren't fun, and this can affect the player's own experience.

The plot borrows from many popular action films, and so many tropes occur. GTA is nothing without satire and parody, but it will still glorify all the explosions and absurd amounts of violence it's inspirations portray. Be prepared for lots of shooting and driving.

GTA Online's story is... is there a story? Sort of. There's a meaningful chain of missions around the lower levels, linking characters from V to Online, but this fades out later as the CEO, VIP, MC, and other "occupation" systems come into play. It's very much the same as V, though - action movie made interactive.

Visuals

To be honest, for a game now in it's second generation after having originally released in 2013, GTA V is still very beautiful. It remains true to the slightly surreal but-oh-so-detailed art of previous GTA installments, so everybody you see in the game is a little weird looking, but it's all very well-modeled and thought out (except for maybe the engine models for most cars).

There are some problems with the graphical settings, mentioned below. The majority of the game is very pretty even at low settings, and at the highest settings it can be stunning. Smaller details regardless of the graphics can be found in sound effects or animations - metal cooling in cars after they're shut off, little twitches and subtle shifts in body language of character models - to create a heavy layer of reality overtop the zany, satire-ridden world.

Online Interactions

The most hit-and-miss part of GTA V/Online. As with any online multiplayer game, the quality of fellow player is going to be across the board. Most of the time, playing missions or heists, players will atleast be competent enough to get the job done. Trolls will appear.

Online's playerbase also suffers from a huge amount of cheaters, exploiters, and otherwise manipulators of the game to ruin it for other people. Do not be surprised if a whale falls out of the sky onto your shiny new super car, then you get teleported into a room with everybody else on the server and are gunned down instantly by an astronaut with a minigun.

There are different types of sessions for solo, friend-only, crew-only, and invite-only play to avoid the general community, but the usefulness of these lobby types have diminished as updates have locked away more and more content to public-only lobbies in an attempt to force a challenge upon players.

Money is always a huge part of GTA, but in Online, it's what makes the entire world go around. Cars, guns, houses, and even playing most jobs costs the player cash. This has ratcheted up since the PC release, as prices grow higher and higher as more ways to make money are introduced. At the same time, however, for a casual player, this typically means they'll never use many of the features later updates have included. For a new player, it can be very overwhelming, and rather negative to their experience as a whole.

Problems, Bugs, and Headaches

Oh yes. GTA V and Online have... problems. Singleplayer is typically sturdy, but as any game does, some issues persist. Mostly with the physics engine sometimes having weird hard stops, or ragdolls and bodies not reacting properly to forces. The anti-aliasing is unreliable, as well as the anisotropic filtering.

Online suffers from random bad connections, timeouts, and the aforementioned lack of anti-cheat. Players report lots of abrupt disconnects, annoyingly long loadtimes, and weird transaction problems when it comes to in-game purchases. Aaaand, of course, lag! Since its all peer-to-peer, most connections with other players rely on the strength of one player's own connection, and if this fails, it can cause lots of drop-outs.


GTA V and, by extension, Online are lots of fun. Worth thousands of hours of playtime just for how much fun it can be doing anything from playing the story to goofing off with friends to just hiking around the map alone.

While it's definitely true the overall experience can be dragged down to an absolute stand-still by jerks in Online or the tedium of doing a mission over and over after you've died the sixth time, there's lots more to be doing in a game like GTA V. I recommend this game not denying it's faults, but deciding that they are outweighed by the greatness all around.

My verdict? Get GTA V, if you haven't already. And, really, why haven't you?

Now, by no means am I an experienced maker of anything but arts, writing, and odd conversation, so that stands to either aid my review or hinder it.

But, dang, do I already love TyranoBuilder.

When the download finalized, which was really fast, I hopped in and was instantly greeted by a screen offering some help to inexperienced players. For someone like me, it was a beauty to see. The tutorial over on the TyranoBuilder site was helpful, if a bit Engrish in places, and I managed to build my own Visual Novel from the loose-in-a-good-way instructions.

After the tutorial, the menus and building have treated me well, and I've continued the simple test VN I developed into a rather large piece about the usual stuff (friendship, romance, dream-walking, et cetera). The easy to grasp drag and drop system gives way into a more advanced, specific numbers-and-references bit where all the fine block-edges mash together to spin those giant cogs of VN.

Further beyond the D&D layout is a scripting option, with Javascript and the program's own TyranoScript branch. I took a class in scripting a while back, so I'm no wizard, but I understood the deal well enough. It seems like a very nice alternative to other VN Studio's methods, in both D&D and scripting, though Python was never my strong suit.

TyranoBuilder does require you to find your own assets, but I found some easy enough with the aid of a Google Search AND the developers' help. They're really pushing forward with assistance on the forums, and seem rather active on the hub itself. A suggestion, though: use some kind of translator software to find what you're looking for, Japanese sites are, unusually, in Japanese.

There's no royalties to be paid, either. No watermarks or any permanent sign that a game built with TyranoBuilder was built with TyranoBuilder than the scripting, I suppose. Only be careful about the assets used, since not all of that stuff is up for commercial.

The games can be developed and published for a variety of platforms, as well. I'm on Windows, of course, but I see Mac, iOS and Android, too, not to mention browser-based versions for Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and IE.

Long story short, I recommend TyranoBuilder. It's been nice to me, it's very supported, and the mascot is absolutely adorable.

Also known as...

"City Burning Simulator,"
"Highway Mangler,"
And, "Traffic Jam Inducer."

Cities: Skylines is a giant, well-rounded, pure city builder that aims to either entertain or challenge. Unlike certain other city sims, there are no disasters. However, the gameplay itself is much more engaging, with fully customizable streets, pipelines, bus routes, electric lines, and districts. On top of this, there's also a map editor to make your own landscape.

There isn't much against the player in Skylines, other than mistakes. Upgrading too much early on is a bad idea, and it's always positive to plan the roads first and zone later, but have a basic idea. Don't put the loud highways and factories by the residential area, make sure there's plentiful road space for trucks moving in and out of the city. Things like that.

The aesthetics are absolutely amazing. For a game meant to be played from the grand ol' god view, the level of detail is astonishing. With one of the first-person mods, which on their own are great, the world can be explored as an actual person, and little details come out. There's readable words on some very small objects, and props that can't be distinguished normally, like toy shovels in sandboxes.

Before Skylines, I played another one of Colossal's games, Cities in Motion, which was similar but less comprehensive. It shows how much the company has improved. It really is a superb game. Recently, to the time of writing, the patch notes mentioned the intergration of some popular mods, and that the game would detect the mods, apply the settings in-game, and unistall the redundant mods. That is wonderful!

The only drawbacks, right now, are that the traffic AI is a tad lame, and the road system is somewhat picky in it's placement. Also, my PC overheats from time-to-time running it, since it's quite CPU intensive.

So, I do recommend Cities: Skylines. It's fun, gorgeous, and a good time-waster.

Kentucky Route Zero

A Game In Five Acts

By Cardboard Computer

The sun lays low on the distant horizon, emblazoning the once-blue sky in fiery oranges and pinks, casting long, rolling shadows across the Kentucky turf. An old truck winds down Interstate sixty-five almost across the Tennessee border, it's driver and his dog lost on a delivery job. The greying man forfeits pride and exits the highway, easing the diesel mobile into the darkened lot of Equus Oils, in search of his destination and a way to get there. He finds his only route - The Zero.

Kentucky Route Zero is a magical-realist (I know, weird) point-and-click adventure game set along the mysterious, lost highway of KY 0, the caves it is paved in, and the river, Echo, it runs along.

In the beginning, there's a horse-head. Conway walks onto the stage. He will be the player's first character to choose for, though other people will join him along the way. Conway is looking for a 5 Dogwood Drive, somewhere along I-65 near Bowling Green, Kentucky, near the Tennessee border. After a tip from a blind gas station attendant, Joseph, Conway is sent down the interstate to find a "big, ugly tree that's always on fire."

From there, the story erupts into a strange bath of folk music, hoarse coughing, clinking bottles, static, robotic punk bikers, XANADU, regret, debt, mammoths, skeletons, bats, and horses. Lots of horses.

Sound strange enough?

OK, so here's a little less of a poetic, rambling view, and a more practical one, focusing on the gameplay, visuals, and sound.

It's point-and-click, built in Unity, with a minimalist menu style and click-the-option progression in speech. The world is presented two-dimensionally, though it all exists in a three-D scape, which is revealed at times to create stunning sights or just to rip a mind apart.

The graphics are minimalist. Nobody has a defined face. The characters are more defined by words than looks, though each is significantly different in posture, height, and attire. Conway is tall and grey, with a brown jacket, whereas Shannon is short and brown, with a bright-blue shirt. The other art, like backgrounds and similar, is painted in a very geometric, yet lively way. Screenshots can do more justice.

The sound design is absolutely amazing, though I'm biased on the bluegrass music, as I grew up with old people from the Appalachian Tennessee. There's synthetic, ambient music in scenes to emphasize a feeling, and compliment the false-2D world, like in the trailer video. Small, consequential effects are implemented well, with car sounds while driving I-65 and soft tube-sound while browsing XANADU. The bluegrass is gorgeous, with the game developers contributing freshly-recorded songs from the 20th century at climactic times. Sad songs during a time of pain, asking songs during tense moments, melancholy with dread.

Now, the elephant in the room(on the boat).

KRZ is incomplete by July 2016. There are five acts, yet by now only four are released. Despite initial advertising with a 2013 release schedule, the game's individual acts have been delayed for personal reasons of the developers,' and quality concerns. However, rest assured that the final act is coming, even if at a slow pace. Cardboard Computer, developers, have other projects and works they participate in. To bide time, free minisodes are released on kentuckyroutezero.com between acts, so those are good to grab if playing or if you want a taste before you decide to buy.

TL;DR

Well, if you're into experimental, easy-paced but strangely thrilling folk wandering... things, buy Kentucky Route Zero. It's art work, and a fun game to explore and find the secrets. If you're patient and thoughtful, you might pull a meaning out. If not, you atleast could spot some references to real-life events, or appreciate the unique stage-like style to the game.

I recommend Kentucky Route Zero, from the bottom of my heart. It means so much more to me than just a game.