Red Dead Redemption 2 is incredibly well-regarded for its immersive rendition of the American West in 1899.  Rockstar Games created an open world that logically reacts to the player’s deeds and misdeeds.  If you commit heinous crimes in a little town, you can always pay off your bounty – but even so, the local sheriff’s office maintains a description of your character’s appearance.  If you come back with the same clothes and facial hair, the locals are prone to remember you as that jerk who shot their cousin a few weeks back.  On the other hand, if you cover your face when you commit crimes and strategically swap outfits when nobody’s watching, not only can you get away with plain-sight robberies, but you can follow them up by casually chatting with the lawmen investigating your crimes.  The depth of the bounty system is arcane and not particularly well explained in tooltips or tutorials, but once you understand it, it’s equally delightful and frustrating to try and manipulate.

This strength of the game is exactly why many players hate Chapter V – the “Guarma” section where the main characters are stranded on a tropical island embattled by civil war.

By: James Maxwell

As if a pandemic, global recession, and race riots weren’t enough to make 2020 a joyful year, mommy nature sent a hurricane into the east coast and up the I95 corridor to wreak havoc in my neck of the woods.  This wasn’t a monster storm.  It only rained for a few hours. But it brought high winds that dropped trees and tossed debris like beads during Mardi Gras.  It caught my local power authority off guard and for over a week after the storm, many remained without power.  Mine was out for 4 days.  This also happened in the middle of a heat wave.  Personally, I can rough it without power just fine, but it is tough on my family.  They are quite fond of everything that has a plug.  It was also hard on my 13 year old pug.  That breed has trouble breathing under ideal conditions.  Due to her advanced age and a myriad of health problems which would garner lots of street cred at an assisted living facility dinner table, she went into respiratory distress and spent a night on oxygen at the emergency vet.  They felt her symptoms were so severe and indicative of enough health problems that we talked about putting her down.  The happy ending was that our power came back, AC was restored and she hacks and coughs just like before the storm.

By: Jonathan Glazer