Thursday, March 23, 2017

Horizon: Zero Dawn

Me reviewing Playstation exclusives seems to become a normal thing now. Weird...
Anyways, today I'll be writing about a pretty new title;

I personally weren't really hyped for this game, I barely recognized it being released. About 60 hours and a platinum trophy later, I have a verdict! It is indeed a good game! The concept of the story is pretty cool, and the graphics are breathtaking. Even though it has some bugs and glitches here and there, it didn't really bother me too much. And what game doesn't have a ton of bugs on release these days anyways..! So I played it, enjoyed it, platinumed it, and uninstalled it. There wasn't much left to do, and I got no spare space on my PS4's harddrive x.x

So, without spoiling to much, here's what the game is about; The world  as we know it has fallen to ruins. Robots seem to have become predators of this new world you'll discover. You're playing as a girl named Aloy, which has lived as an outcast from her clan, the Nora, ever since she was born. Another outcast, Rost, had the duty to raise her, until she could be on her own. As just a kid she falls down into a cave, one of the forbidden areas for the Nora, and finds a device from the distant past that let's her see things unseen to the naked eye. She takes it with her when she climbs back up, and never let it go. As she grows up she learns how to use this device to her advantage, taking out one big bad robot after another!

This is all I want to tell you about the story, hopefully it sounds interesting enough :p
Even though this is a pretty new game, it still feels familiar. When I played it I recognized some similarities to games like Monster Hunter, Far Cry and Assassin's Creed. Like, the robots have weak spots, just like the monsters in Monster Hunter, and some of these can be removed from their bodies if it takes enough damage on that spot. It also reminds me of Far Cry when it comes to animal hunting, and pouch- and potion making. And last but not least; it reminds me of Assassin's Creed mostly because of the climbing, and the movements you see while climbing. So it's a new, yet familiar, experience.


So here's what I think of it all:

- The graphics; it's just gorgeous! There are some stunning environments,  and character designs are very nice and fitting to the scenario. I only have one complaint; When you talk to NPCs, and the game kind of zooms in on the faces, you can see that the facial expressions they make are very.... weird. And unnatural. It kind of seems like the equipment used to record facial expressions (I guess they used one of those?) was a bit too sensitive. So it should have been toned down a bit. But everything else is just great!

- The story; Very good, and very interesting! BUT! I feel it may have been rushed at the end..? It kind of feels a bit bare-boned. And trust me! I read all those logs laying around! I think they could have worked more on that. It was a great story, but I'm a bit sad it ended up a bit short. But the post-credits scene gives us a hint that they may be doing a sequel.

- The sounds/music; One of the things I loved with this game were the music. I still find myself singing on Aloy's theme randomly, even a week after putting the game away. So the music was good, and the voice acting was good! All good!

- The gameplay; As I said, it feels new, but also familiar. The gameplay is fresh and smooth, and feels right. But the gameplay isn't really new, it's a lot of different mechanics from other games put into one. Don't get me wrong, I loved it. But the gameplay was simply not "original" enough to get too much praise. For me it was "the Monster Hunter I would play!"

It was a really good game, and I would highly recommend it! If they decide they'll make a sequel, I'll probably play that as well! :)

That was all for this game! May there be more awesome games for me to play and review throughout the year!

Until next time~!

~Kori

Wednesday, March 22, 2017

School and stuff

Oh, long time no see again! I've been busy, as usual. I've been working on my Lightning cosplay, been kicked out of that school I mentioned in the previous post, and tried yet another internship, in which I strongly consider dropping out of.

So first things first; Why did I get kicked out from that other school?
Well, I'm getting economic support from a company that aims to get people out into jobs. So if I need education, I'll have to follow their rules and reqirements. We agreed that I could finish this year I lacked to be able to advance to Universities, and at the time we made this agreement there were some changes in their rules, which they didn't get informed about until about 2 months after the changes were set in motion. So in the end of December I got a warning from my supervisor that the company had canceled the payment for my education, because the place I went to wasn't eligible according to their new rules and requirements, and I had to drop out.
Good news though! In fall this year I'm getting a new chance at completing my last school year! This time we've had closer followups from the company, and it was decided I should take the school year at a regular school, and not like the self study type the last one were (the current school is free for me if I'm over 25, the previous one cost a lot of money for one year).
So yeah, I'm getting there!

After I lost my chance at finishing this school year this spring, I decided to try and Finish my Lightning cosplay (from Final Fantasy XIII). I've been trying to save money for fabric to finish the belts, pouches, gloves and shoes, and also saving money for a ticket to this years big Norwegian convention; Desucon. I also got a "commission" from a friend of mine, who's going to cosplay Serah (from the same game, Lightning's sister), and she asked me to sew her cosplay as well. So I got some work to do the next 3 months! x.x

Some progress on my cosplay:



About a month ago I wanted to start an internship, to have something to do some of the days of the week, to get out and meet people etc, and also to feel I'm to good use for someone. Now I'm more unsure if that's what I still want. I'm not sure if it's the place that's the problem, since I'm one of 5 other interns there. I feel like it's overflowing with people there, and I kinda feel useless. All work is done before lunch break, and then we just stand there looking into the wall... I also still struggle a lot with the social part of the job, and now that I know how the cash register work, I'm usually set to stand there and handle all the costumers. It's really stressful for me, and I'm not the kind of person to speak up for myself, so I'm just accepting this and feel like I don't want to go to work every day...
I should probably talk to my supervisor about this. Maybe get an internship somewhere else or something. Or maybe take a break to cool down, since I got a lot of other things on my mind as well...

Anyways, I'm really looking forward to starting up with school this fall (even though the rest of the class will be like 18 year olds). To finally finish that chapter of my life, and move on to something better. the reason I want to finish this year is so I can move on to study game design, which is one of my dream jobs. But you probably knew that already :p

Now I got some stuff to do (like writing a review of Horizon: Zero Dawn), so...

Until next time~!

~Kori