These days there is a certain anxiety about playing The Division , the action video game by the French company Ubisoft that takes place in a New York devastated by a deadly virus. Going through the deserted streets of Manhattan , with a meticulous recreation of places like Times Square or the Hudson Yards, causes chills to see how certain dystopias can become premonitory. The pandemic that has paralyzed the world, also that of videogames, is not far from the one posed by this title, which is intended to be played in massive games over the Internet. More than one will have taken advantage of the confinement at home to return to battle the culprits of the spread of the virus, although possibly he did it playing his second episode, which moves the action to Washington , retaining the same disturbing atmosphere but with a more focused approach. ambitious. A Herculean effort of documentation captured in 17 square kilometers of the American capital, millimetrically reproduced on screen, which is looming large centers of power and institutions that have helped to forge the history of the most powerful nation in the world, incapable in this fiction of overcome the claw of a health crisis of mammoth proportions.
In search of entertainment and answers to the chaos that surrounds us, we will come across eagles, foxes and other wild animals that roam freely on the banks of the Potomac River before the unexpected withdrawal of man. One more nod to what has ended up happening in cities around the world due to the uncontrolled advance of the Covid-19 . In these extremely urgent conditions, visiting the Pentagon , the Capitol , the White House , the Lincoln Memorial, or inside the National Archives , where the first copy of the United States Constitution (1787) is kept, is an intense experience. but heartbreaking.
To take the pulse of the frenetic rhythm that until recently beat in our cities it will be necessary to resort to games like Grand Theft Auto 5 , the creative culmination of Rockstar that, despite having been seven years in the gap (an eternity in this industry), It continues to show muscle and is one of the most celebrated and played interactive works by the gamer community and youtubers. With an intricate narrative that places us in situations of dubious morality, this open-world title — that is, one that gives complete freedom in completing missions — does more to promote and show Los Angeles (Los Santos, in-game) than many advertising campaigns or travel guides. What happens is that here not only the tourist and friendly face is shown, but also the most sordid of the lumpen. From there emerge the three hustling protagonists to conquer the city that best embodies the contradictions of the American dream. We will visit the iconic Venice Beach huts (Vespucci Beach), the glamor of Hollywood Boulevard (Vinewood Boulevard), the decadent luxury villas of Beverly Hills (Rockford Hills) or the iconic Santa Monica Pier Ferris wheel (Del Perro Pier), between other postcard stamps.
If what we want is to enjoy the freedom afforded by large open spaces, in Red Dead Redemption 2 , a powerful tale of the American western punctuated with memorable characters, we will find a poetic song to all that nature offers us without offering anything in return . It is difficult not to get excited the first time we witnessed a misty sunrise next to the smoking embers of the campfire where hours before we chewed tobacco under the stars. The same abundance of sensations assails when contemplating a sepia-tinged sunset while we tie the horse to the entrance of a dusty town or when one bumps face first, amidst vast plains, lush forests and beaked snowy mountains , with large mammals like deer, bear and bison. Illustrious representatives of a bestiary that gathers 200 wildlife animals that populate North America : armadillos, badgers, alligators, grouses, vultures, condors ... As Evellyn Miller tells us, a hermit transcript of Henry David Thoreau , in one of the missions of the game: “The authentic America is not found in the desires, but in the purity of its landscape”.
The art of sublimating nature has another outstanding student in Firewatch , a hypnotic walking simulator in which its weight is more narrative than action, which puts the player in the shoes of a park ranger. National of Yellowstone (USA) that fights against fires, loneliness and a love break during a suffocating summer. Immersed in the forests of Wyoming , you can hear the harmonious singing of wild birds, the sound of the water as we navigate waterfalls and streams, and the threatening crackling of the fire on the horizon, as we weave a complex relationship with a woman through intermittent conversations by walkie-talkie. A delight for the senses and an ode to life and the simplicity of things.
A more adrenaline-free approach to the outside world is what the Forza Horizon driving saga offers, the fourth installment of which transports us to the greenery and humidity of Great Britain , where to test the engines of 450 iconic cars in motorsport history in a huge secondary road map through landscapes and towns of Wales , Scotland and England . At any time you can apply the handbrake and take photos of the places we visit. Photorealism is so successful that it is difficult to differentiate the authentic image from the virtual one. The Lake District National Park , in the county of Cumbria (in north-west England), is perhaps the most spectacular area precisely because of its rugged and mountainous nature. Like the rest of the scenarios that we cross at devilish speeds, these lakes declared a Unesco world heritage that inspired an entire generation of romantic poets of the 19th century can be visited in any of the four seasons and see the whimsical changes that they have on the landscape. the Meteorology. It is essential to contemplate Derwntwater Lake, one of the largest and most visited, in the middle of the spring, when the hills and forests that surround it are covered with a blanket of purple bluebells.
But there are historical landscapes that will never return and that can only be visited in cinema, literature and also in video games. The Assasins Creed saga has spent almost three decades recreating key moments in history with enormous historical rigor. Its last chapter is immersed in the myths and legends of Ancient Greece , in the context of the Peloponnesian War (431 BC - 404 BC) that confronted the city-states of Athens and Sparta and marked the definitive decline of Greek culture. In the role of mercenary, we will have to choose between joining the Delos League (Athens) or the Peloponnese League (Sparta). We will start the epic on the Ionian island of Kefalonia and from there we will jump to the Attica peninsula, the main territory of modern Greece, where we will explore the polis of Athens , cradle of modern civilization, with its sacred temples where philosophy and culture flourished. calm debate of opposing ideas. Characters such as Socrates , Herodotus (considered the first historian) or Hippocrates , father of modern medicine, will enlighten us with their weighted judgments, while before our incredulous eyes all the beauty and power that once treasured this privileged corner of the Mediterranean, with locations such as the temple of Apollo on the island of Delphi , Crete or Mount Olympus .
To emulate the adventures of legendary Victorian explorers like Henry Morton Stanley or Richard Francis Burton , nothing better than unrolling an old yellowed parchment world map on the table and tracing in ink a route to the Indiana Jones to hunt for great treasures. Uncharted , with four main installments exclusively for the Playstation family of consoles, allows you to live intense plots in exotic and unknown places on the planet. Our desire for knowledge and adventure will take us to Kathmandu , the motley capital of Nepal surrounded by the Himalayas; to the Caribbean coast of the colorful Cartagena , in Colombia; to the exuberant orchard of the island of Madagascar; to the magical mountains of Sahyadri, also known as the Western Ghats, in India, or to the Saudi desert of Rub al-Jhali , the most extensive and with the most extreme temperatures. The creators of this successful video game were inspired, among other feats, by the Venetian merchant Marco Polo's expeditions to the East and the convulsive biography of the British archaeologist Thomas Edward Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia .
And if the world is too small for us, we will have to put on the astronaut suit to embark on the greatest galactic epic made video game. No Man Sky , which is best enjoyed through virtual reality, launches us to conquer outer space, an imagined universe in which the planets that astronomers have discovered since ancient times are not found, but rather a rosary of Celestial bodies and galaxies from the imagination of the Hello Games studio. Endless stars and strange creatures to build our particular universe without the corsets of modern science . As the Buzz Lightyear enthusiast said in Toy Story : "To infinity and beyond."
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