Aloy back in the saddle
Confession: I have never been much of an “audio guy”, largely being content to use whatever pair of cheap earphones that came with a longsincedead cellphone I can find lying around the house. But getting my hands on this headset may have changed that.
A special limited themed edition of the existing A30 wireless headset, this is a tribute to everyone’s favourite Star Wars bounty hunter / solo dad The Mandalorian, coming in the colour of “Beskar steel” and with (interchangeable) showreferencing icons on the outside of each earpiece. The tribute even extends to little StarWarsy noises sounding when you turn the headset on and off. It looks great, and offers a snug but very comfy fit.
Setting the headset up is basically as simple as plugging its USB transmitter into the front of your XBox (a PlayStation version is also available; you can also buy the right transmitter separately if you have both) and turning it on. Everything autodetects and you’re off. Sound quality is great; straight away I noticed the satisfyingly crisp snaphiss of merely navigating the menu of my old fave Destiny 2, and realised I was even picking up musical notes in the lower register of the score I’d never noticed before in my old headset (which is basically dead to me now). My television’s sound was also put to shame.
When it came time to hit multiplayer, online teammates reported even the A30’s internal mic did a pretty good job, but adding the detachable boom mic elevated clarity even further. The multifunction minijoystick on the right ear makes it easy to balance voice and game volume on the fly. Perhaps the only issue I have with the headset is that I’ve found it a bit tricky to position the boom mic without it sometimes picking up the sound of my breathing. I’ve got a big stupid lower jaw though, so it’s very possible that it’s just a meproblem.
When game time’s over — and battery life is a whopping 27 hours, so you’ll probably still have some charge left — you can connect the headset to your phone via Bluetooth and listen to whatever, and wherever, you like. (Rep the Manadlorian on the bus! Drown out Dave’s annoying stories at work!) Controlling track selection and volume is easy with the multifunction control. Download the companion app and you can even mix from multiple simultaneous audio sources. Do you want the sound of you blasting the Hive in Destiny 2 to be accompanied by a soundtrack from the Spice Girls? Because now you can do it! The app also lets you dive into the nittygritty and customise balancing presets.
What a great piece of kit this is. It’s not cheap, but if you’re serious about your gaming and prepared to fork over the cash, it’s a worthy investment.
HORIZON FORBIDDEN WEST: BURNING SHORES
From: Sony.
For: PS5
Game developers need to be careful when bringing out addons for wildly successful games. The risk is that a base game can be so good, or so perfectly contained within its existing storyline, that the DLC seems like bloat or just a cash grab. In addition, — as I seem to strike constantly now — muscle memory among players can fade quickly as they move on to other games, so it’s easy to alienate gamers who loved a title the first time but have forgotten how to play it while waiting for DLC, and get put off when they pick it up again.
Thankfully, there are no such concerns with Burning Shores, the DLC for the amazing Horizon Forbidden West, arguably the best game of 2022.
The futuristic sequel just did everything so darn well. It played smoothly, looked amazing and had just the right blend of action, exploration, tinkering and storytelling.
Returning into the shoes of protagonist Aloy, you are taken to a new area known as the Burning Shores — thanks to the lava everywhere — that was once a city you might have heard of called Los Angeles.
Aloy’s companion is a warrior from another tribe, Seyka, on a quest to rescue her sister from the clutches of a morally bankrupt billionaire (wait, such a thing exists?) called Walter Londra.
Broadly speaking, it’s more of the same gameplay.
Aloy uses her supreme hunting skills, her range of spectacular bows and arrows, and her various abilities to challenge a bunch of robot animals and
Aloy travels to new and exciting environments in which to fire arrows at robots in
angry humans, clamber up and over buildings and walls and islands, solve the odd puzzle and generally soak in the quite extraordinary scenery around her.
The main quest is fairly tight — perhaps eight or nine hours — but the story is engaging and the ending, without spoilers, sets up a guaranteed sequel to the sequel.