PixlBit

Last month I bought Bioshock Infinite and Far Cry 3. I recently posted my spoiler-free review of Bioshock to let you know how the game turned out, and once I was finished I hopped right into Far Cry 3, an open world stealth action shooter that I've been looking forward to for some time. Playing these two games back to back is a lot of shooter to take in, so I also took a break from the shooters to get some strategy and RPG time in lately as well.

Far Cry 3

This game has been a mixed bag, but the parts of it that I love are so fantastic that it's a net gain instead of a loss. I'm close to beating the game, I'm deep into the second of the two major islands that make up the game world. So far the biggest negatives about the game come from the characters and narrative. All the captured friends you're trying to save are unlikeable, all the natives you're fighting for are unlikeable, and if a great tsunami came and swallowed every soul on these two islands the world wouldn't care. But the gameplay and system-design is fantastic and turned out to be everything I was hoping for. The reason I bought this game was because of the stealth gameplay, the sandbox, and how all the various systems allow for emergent unscripted carnage.

The gameplay loop that keeps me playing this game is: activating radio towers (like in Assassin's Creed) to unveil new swaths of the map, unlocking new weapons and upgrading them, finding all the enemy outposts in the newly unveiled territory and conquering them with stealth until I need to go activate the next radio tower and find more to conquer. I really enjoy attacking outposts, every single one is like a perfectly sized mission in itself. Securing new outposts is not only fun but the incentive to do it is that you gain a new fast-travel location, the pirate presence in the area becomes weaker so you may travel safer, and there's loot. When I come across new outposts I stalk around in the hills, forests, or whatever vantage points are outside the area, I pull out my camera, tag all the enemies I find so I can track them, and then I begin a systematic process of silently killing every guard in any method I can while remaining undetected. If you secure the area without being detected you gain a massive XP reward. You can play without stealth and Rambo your way through the outposts if you want, it's still very satisfying and much faster, but I prefer being undetected. You can even lure in nearby wild animals like tigers to help you, or you may find dangerous animals in cages around the camps in which case you can shoot the cage and release them to chaotic results.

Besides assaulting outposts, my other favorite thing to do is just roam around. Because of the system-design and the possibility of emergent gameplay, the craziest things that can happen to you in Far Cry 3 will occur when you're not expecting anything to happen. When you're on the road going from point A to B, or out in the wilds gathering an herb for a potion, or just looking at the scenery. Complete chaos and excitement can arise from nothingness and turn a routine drive down the dirt road into an unforgettable moment of its own. One time I was poking around some abandoned shacks to get a loot chest when I heard a commotion from pirates outside. Some enemies were driving down the road, saw my car outside and stopped to check things out, turning my random loot-grabbing into a moment of suspense and dread. Then they all suddenly got into a crazy fight with a group of Komodo dragons that were coming down from the hillsides near the shack I was hiding in. I sneaked around avoiding detection from both parties, assassinated a pirate and pulled him into a bush, and ultimately helped the animals kill all the pirates. However once all the pirates were dead I was left standing tall with four Komodo's ready to chase me down, and they did. All the way to the nearby river which I dove into, got mauled by a terrifying alligator, barely escaped the river with my life just to find a forest fire spreading on the other side because I guess some kind of unrelated chaos was happening over there that I had no idea was occurring until I wandered into it.

Civilization Revolution

Bioshock and Far Cry are great games but I needed a break from all the shooting, so one game I've been playing a lot is Civ Rev. Civilization is always a perfect go-to game for me that I can enjoy no matter what the mood. I like to play against the CPU and I've nestled into the King level difficulty setting for now because it allows me to play the defensive turtle style I enjoy while always being engaged by the enemy Civs. It's quite challenging early on, people are always at war with me, and you have to make the right choices at the right times to create defensive units to protect your cities, build infrastructure to improve cities, and do research into new technology. Early in the match you have to fight for survival constantly, but at the King difficulty if I survive long enough and progress enough I can eventually hit a tipping point to where I can begin to dominate and go on the offensive finally. The tipping point usually comes once I've built the Cathedral (gives +2 culture per every population point), the University (quadruples science production), and something that increases building production like a Factory. Once I have those assets I can build new offensive military units and use them to clear out all the hostiles from my lands, as well as build new defensive military units that can be positioned at strategic borders or land bridges so that I can keep enemies from getting to my cities in the first place.

That playstyle gives me a lot of satisfaction, I love starting out the game being swamped by enemy armies, defending my capital like it's the Alamo, and slowly over time I get stronger until I'm capable of repelling all invaders and securing my cities borders so that I can prosper without being surrounded every round. King difficulty is not too easy, nor too hard, and let's me play like the turtle I am.

Dark Souls

I took a break from this game for a while but now I'm getting back into it. Some of you may remember a series I'm doing called the Dark Souls Diary. I play through a few areas of the game, beat the bosses, and then write out a new entry telling you about my favorite battles and experiences I've been having in my first playthrough of the game. In my last entry I told you of my adventures in the Demon Ruins, Lost Izalith, New Londo Ruins, and I told you that I would be entering Tomb of the Giants and beyond for the next entry. Right now I'm at the end of the Tomb and I'm preparing to fight the boss, I've heard he is called Gravelord Nito. Tonight I will fight him and see what he's like. I'm happy to be near the end of Tomb of the Giants, it's been a very dangerous and dark place. Last night I was around the boss door and all these tiny baby skeletons were surrounding me and attacking me with toxic attacks. It was terrifying, they remind me of possessed little dolls. According to the walkthroughs and wikis I've seen, I'm getting close to finishing the whole game so I'm pretty excited because I've come so far. Once I've beaten Tomb of the Giants and at least one more area I think I'll put together a new entry for the Dark Souls Diary.