in that case:

Game #1 - Rebel Galaxy
Time: 20 hours


Amazing game during the first 15 or so hours until I got to a point where the game becomes super grindy, and I was left with the option of dropping it as I usually do when I cba anymore, or cheating and giving myself all the money to buy the good stuff. I went with option 2 and the next 5 hours until I finished it were fun again, although a different "im super OP" kind of fun. Amazing soundtrack.

Game #2 - Axiom Verge
Time: 12 hours


Probably my favorite "Metroidvania" in many years, and easily one which Ill constantly reference as "you know, its like symphony of the night or axiom verge" from now on. I didnt get every item or map location, but I felt I got what I needed out of it.

Game #3 - Dyscourse
Time: 1 hour give or take


So yeah, this game is a kind of choose your own adventure thing, obviously meant to be played multiple times. But to be honest, I got what I wanted out of it from just 1 run, and just doing it again just to see different things isnt something that appeals to me. Cute little game with some grim situations that totally clash with the art style. I also played the little bonus story which stars various indie devs, which was also cute.

Game #4 - Rack N Ruin
Time: 5 hours


Very cool little Zelda clone with shades of bullet hell shooter, it has pretty much everything going for it. Cool dungeons, great art, good gameplay, cool items, funny writing. I really enjoying my time with it, you could easily put 2 or 3 more hours onto that if you search all the items, I pretty much mainlined it, but its still going to be a short game (which these days is a good thing for me). Great surprise.

Game #5 - Battle: Lost Angeles
Time: 45minutes (lol)


Yup, thats a 45 minute campaign in a modern videogame. No, really



Not much to say, its a god awful, budget ass movie tie in game with zero redeaming qualities. Looks like something from 360's first year, cutscenes are motion comic pictures like something out of a iOS game, it has 1 enemy type, like 3 weapons, its hilariously bad. But hey, its not even 1 hour so its fast at least? Good lord...

Game #6 - Gurumin A Monstrous Adventure
Time - 8 hours


Super cute action rpg, that altought it skews a little young / childish, it has a lot of heart. Cool levels, looks good (considering its a psp port), gameplay is neat, just a all around nice package. I didnt get all the items so theres probably 1 or 2 more hours in there if you want to look for everything.

Game #7 - Dragon's Dogma Dark Arisen
Time: 60+ hours


Great game that becomes amazing with the Dark Arisen content. Im not big on replaying games or doing NG+ usually so im going to call it at finishing the main game and the datk arisen stuff once (even tho the dark arisen island is meant to be replayed). Easily my GOTY so far in 2016.


Game #8 - XCOM 2
Time: 50 hours

It was actually about 40 hours or so, I restarted, and stretched out the end game quite a bit before doing the last mission. Anyway, great game, and a great sequel soured by performance issues and some bugs. the last mission was so bad it broke my saves and I had to re-do it lol. Still, great game and I cant wait for some DLC.


Game #9 - Rise of the Tomb Raider
Time: 22 hours

Another great outing from Crystal Dynamic, they continue to secretly make the best Uncharted games (thats right, I said it!). Like it more than the first one overall, even if its more of the same. Performance issues on PC were a shame, but the end game is much better than the first, and theres a ton of stuff to do besides the main game for those into that. My only real complaint is it feels like a 20 hour game with mechanics for a 40 hour game. By the time you have all your stuff and you feel like spending another 20 hours with it, the game is over. Still, highly recomended, will probably be in my top 10 this year.


Game #10 - Darkest Dungeon
Time: 55 hours

First lets get this out of the way: I didnt finish the game. I tried the titular "Darkest Dungeon" (aka the last one) a couple of times with max level heroes and just got wiped out easily. I have no idea what to do besides get very lucky with RNG, and I cba to level a bunch of heroes up to max level again to bang my head against it. 55 hours, I feel like ive gotten what I was gonna get out of the game. That being said, I absolutely loved it and it will easily be one of my favorite games of the year.


Game #11 - Out There Somewhere
Time: 2 hours

Cute little puzzle platformer with great pixel art and some nasty teleport-based puzzles. Had to use a walkthrough a couple of times to figure out some puzzles. Its pretty short so its a easy one to finish, and if you like puzle games I highly recomend it (especially because its been bundled and super cheap so many times you probably own it).


Game #12 - 140
Time: 50 minutes

Very short puzzle platform with simplistic graphics and a great soundtrack. I loved the way the sound and puzzles worked together, and the asthetics work nicely to fit the mood of the game (reminds me a lot of Thomas Was Alone except with funky beats instead of the british narrator). Its very short and the last puzzle is annoying, but its worth playing.


Game #13 - Cubetractor
Time: 4 hours

Very cool puzzle game where you have to combine various cubes to form defenses and turrets to get around each level. I missed one of the optional puzzles, it was doing my head in and I couldnt find a solution online so I just skipped it and ended the game. The definition of hidden gem.


Game #14 - Hyper Light Drifter
Time: 7 hours

Awesome zelda style action rpg (emphasys on the action) with gorgeous graphics and a cool soundtrack. Hard as balls, I wish it was longer, because I love whats there. Lots of secrets to find if youre into that kind of thing. Must buy on sale, full price im not so sure, I dont regret it but, well...I wish it was longer :/


Game(s) #15 - Pink Hour / Pink Heaven
Time: 30 minutes between both

Im including both as these free to play games are so short that I struggle to justify even including them, let alone each as its own game (even tho they technically are). Anyway, super cute platformers that are basically ads for Kero Blaster. But hey, they look great, play great and I just overall like the vibe of them. It made me want to play Kero Blaster, so I guess mission acomplished. They actually have different endings (well, Pink Heaven at least does) and unlock a hard mode level each, so for what is basically just a ad for Kero Blaster, they are surprisingly well thought out.


Game #16 - Dark Souls III
Time: 45 hours

Amazing conclusion to the trilogy and my favorite Souls game probably. Cant wait to play more of this in NG+ and especially the DLC, but for now I need a well deserved break. Killed all the bosses and did all the zones, and used a lot less summons than previous games surprisingly (only 3 times). Most likely my GOTY for 2016


Game #17 - Enter The Gungeon
Time: 24 hours

Awesome little rogue-like twin joystick shooter with a meta progression system very similar to Crypt of the Necrodancer. Awesome art, great soundtrack, great gameplay. I finally finished a full run, but these games are never truly over. Still, I got end credits so it counts. Will probably go back to it regulary now and then.


Game #18 - Mad Max
Time: 43 hours

When I took some time off work I saw myself playing Dark Souls 3 for 50 hours or so (which I did), I did not however see me play Mad MAx of all games for over 40 hours. And you know what? Its great. Its a super well made videogame. Looks beautiful, runs amazing (never dropped from 60 even on those ridiculous storms, except when it autoaved...Dark Souls 3 had the same problem, stupid auto saves. Might be my HDD tho), gameplay is fun and both the driving and the fighting feel great, really impactful. Sound design is amazing (barely any music but alot of music and sound cues very much like a movie), everything sounds super nasty from the engines to the impact sounds (I never got tired of kicking down a door to open it, so satisfying), story is ok-ish with some colorful characters (Chumbucket best new character of 2016) and a great ending (something games usually fail at as we know), just a overall very well made, very satisfying package.

If you are not into the whole side stuff collectathon, you can still get a meaty 8 hours or so I'd imagine for the main story only. One of the easiest recomendations in ages, especially at the prices it usually goes for.


Game #19 - Street Fighter V
Time: 52 hours (for now)

Was going to add this at the end of the year as my 51s game (with Marvel Heroes being the 52nd, both games I play on and off throughout the year and dont really end) but I might aswell do it now because I havent playe dit in a couple of months and I wont be back any time soon probably. Ill play more eventually, probably with the june update, or when all the season pass characters are out, but for now I feel ok about putting it in since ive done most of what you can do atm anyway. Anyway, amazing core game with great graphics and almost perfect gameplay marred by all the launch issues we all know about and that still persist. Its an amazing game wrapped in a awful package. Its really a shame.


Game #20 - Bastion
Time: 7 hours

Ive been putting off playing Bastion for years after back at the releae time not feeling it very much and only playing it for a couple of hours. Decided to finally give it another shot and restart and I loved it. the movement feels incredibly sluggish at first but once you get used to it, the art, amazing soundtrack, the cool narragation and some nice combat all come together for something really cool. I always thought Bastion (and Transistor, which I also stopped after a few hours...whats up with me and Supergiant Games games?) on paper should be something I would enjoy a lot, and it turns out it was, I guess I just wasnt in the mood for the type of game back then.


Game #21 - Momodora III
Time: 2 hours

Fantastic little action platformer. Great pixel art, great soundtrack, controls are very responsive, theres items to find / buy and use (some quite OP in fact lol), secret areas and a new game + opens up when you finish the game. Quite a package for what is essencial a very short game. Makes me really interested in the latest Momodora game, which I hear is more of a full fledged game.


Game #22 - Lego Marvel Super Heroes
Time: 10 hours

Super fun casual adventure romp (as all the Lego games re I guess) that makes great use of the license. Lenghty campaign and I didnt even touch the open world part of the game and the million side activities in it, or the ridiculous amount of unlocks. I imagine this is a great game to play co-op, especially for / with kids, and value wise its an amazing package with all the stuff in it. Good graphics, silly but fun story that actually has some really inventive set pieces with some bosses and power usages, jus overall a great game. Easily the best Lego game Ive played.


Game #23 - Castlevania Lords of Shadow: Mirror of Fate HD
Time: 7 hours

Both a great "metroidvania" game, and a great sequel thematically to Lords of Shadow, I really enjoyed this. PC version looks good for what it is (a remkae of a 3ds game), gameplay is nice except some of the platforming since the jumps feel very floaty (but the game is very generous with your "magnetic pull" to platforms to be fair), the zones are big and varied, lots of bosse, lots of items and magic to open new pathways, and story wise I really like how they subvert the classic Castlevania lore in a logical way (well logical following the events of Lords of Shadow). I ended up tracking down a lot of items in the first half, no so much near the end. The game said I finished at 87% completion which isnt bad I guess for the genre. Very recomended, and made me want to play Lords of Shadow 2 finally (im actually a big fan of the first one)


Game #24 - Castlevania Lords of Shadow 2
Time: 17 hours

Good game plagued with a split personality and obvious game development problems (which were public), at times it feels like they were making 2 different games. Still, the combat is great, some of the vistas in the castle sections are great (not so much in the modern city setting) and theres quite a bit of backtracking for upgrades, much more so than in the first game. I like it in that B-tier game we are lacking more and more, but some bad stealth sections and otherwsie frustrating parts make it not as good as the first one. I still like the trilogy in the end tho, and really like what they did with the lore in a new setting. The Revelations DLC is neat, if a bit short.


Game #25 - Contrast
Time: 3 hours

Super disapointing and a serious case of "dont judge a book by its cover", or in this case, a game by its screenshots. In fact, the noir-ish art style is prtty much the only thing this short adventure has going for it. Super loose and finicky controls, uninspired light/shadow based puzzles made worse by the bad controls, and a story that wants to be deeper and more serious than your usual videogame but falls appart because of the awful writing, its really a shame how badly this turned out because it looked super promissing. At least its short :/


Game #26 - Ys Origin
Time: 10 hours

Another fun entry in the Ys series, although compared to Seven (the only other I finished) it suffers from a simple story and the single location throughout the game (although the tilesets change of course). Still, Ys games are super fun to play and this is no diffeent, and this one has the difference that you can choose from 2 different characters, one melee and one ranged, with a third unlocking when you finish with either. The path through the game is the same but there are some differences, which is good for completionists or people that like to get the most out of their games, but I have zero interest in doing all that again with a different character, I would rather spend that time playing another game, for example the other Ys games I havent played. Still good tho, and totally worth playing if you like action rpgs in the least.


Game #27 - Astebreed
Time: 3 hours

3 hours because I spent about 1 hour on the last boss before I gave up and deleted the game before I thre my controller at my screen or something. Some of the worst difficulty scaling / spike Ive ever seen as the game is one of the easiest games ever in the first 4 levels, then all of a sudden chapters 5 and 6 (which are basically just bosses) it becomes way too hard (in my opinion of course), the ch5 boss almost made me rage quit and the chapter 6 boss did make me rage quit as I already said. Basically told myself "why am I doing this im not having fun" and called it. I could do it on easy (I think?) but you cant change difficulty without restarting the game and I just cant be arsed to do that again (even if its very short). The game itself is ok, very over rated imo, it looks gorgeous but they have dialogue running throughout the game which is impossible to follow with the chaos on screen, and you can just cruise by the game with auto shots until the aformentioned last chapters. Super disapointing imo.


Game #28 - Darksiders II Deathinitive Edition
Time: 26 hours

Welp my save got corrupted from a power cut right before the last boss so I guess im done with it. I already finished vanilla so Ive seen the ending, but I lost the character if I wanted to ever do NG+ and more importantly, I lost access to the DLC (because you need to "unlock" the dlc dungeons at certain parts of the story) so I guess I wont be playing the DLC. Such a shame because I actually had a super good time with the game this second time around after feeling disapointed back when I played vanilla. Not gonna lie tho, this corrupt save thing kinda soured me on the whole thing. Oh well :/


Game #29 - Salt and Sanctuary
Time: 21 hours

amazing metroidvania meets dark souls which manages to feel like the best of both worlds. How this game was made by 2 people (Ska Studios) is beyond me, but then agin you could say the same about most 1 or 2 person games. Awesome level design, tons of zones, tons of bosses, great weapons, cool leveling system, I love the art but I can understand how someone think its ugly, just overall a great package and well worth the price. Will easily be in my GOTYs this year.


Game #30 - Ghost 1.0
Time: 11 hours

another excellent metroidvania from the maker of UnEpic, even if its a shorter game than its predecessor (by alot), its a much more polished and refined experience. Neat sotry, great level design, tons of weapons, tons of secrets, decent voice acting, and he reigned in the meme-style humour of UnEpic. Great game all around, I wish there was some sort of "interted castle", only because I wanted more of it, its that good.


Game #31 - Overwatch
Time: 100 hours

While I will probably play more eventually, since im taking a extended break and dont really feel like playing it anymore at the time, I feel like its a good time to add it to the list. Amazing team-based shooter thant unfortunately like all multiplayer games is heavily dependant on other people, and thus your experience will wildly fluctuate. The new ranked mode isnt exaclty what I wanted and it seems they are adjusting it, but the time I spent with it was great. After about 800 matches tho I started to feel the burn a bit. Great graphics, amazing sound design and the traditional blizzard polish make for a great package, one that I will hopefully return to now and then when they add heroes and maps.


Game #32 - 10000000
Time: 6 hours (3 on PC + 3 on mobile)

After getting into You Must Build a Boat on PC I decided to play the original 10000000 on my phone as a time waster at work. Either the game is much shorter than the sequel, or just plainly easier to play on a phone because sliding the tiles with your finger is much faster than with a mouse. Either way, its a great match 3 type game with a ridiculous amount of "just one more run" syndrome. Cute pixel art (which again looks better on a small screen), fun meta progression system, just a fun and addicting game all around. Ill probably start up I Must Build a Boat on my phone at work now also even tho Im playing it on PC heh.


Game #33 - You Must Build a Boat
Time: 12 hours (7 on mobile + 5 on PC)

The sequel to 10000000 and a much better game overall. The campaign is twice as long, the meta is better with more upgrades and stuff to do, even for future playthroughs, the setting is cooler, just overall a better game. Still super fun and addictive also.

Main Post 2

Moving the previous two games I posted here, along with a 3rd game, so that I can use my first post as a master list:


Game 1: Wolfenstein: The New Order [PC] - ~9 hours


I had heard a some positive about this game, but I was still pleasantly surprised at most aspects of the game, in particular the great characters and world-building. My only complaint is that I found weapon switching to be a bit unintuitive, but I am not sure why. Possibly due to the hud, and due to weapons not being ordered according to when you acquire them. Sliding was also a bit impractical on my keyboard, which led to some silly deaths. However, I do hope that the studio will build upon what they've accomplished here, since I could definitely do with more shooters like this one.


Game 2: Suits: A Business RPG [PC] - ~3 hours

It's an RPG? I got this after it was mentioned in the Steam community thread, and it was a rather odd experience. Crudely handdrawn graphics, surreal humor, meat, and memes, packaged in the form of a very simple, old-school RPG. The premise can be described as 1984 if The Party was a corporation, but mostly it just defies explanation. However, at less than $1, all I lost was time .. and my dignity.


Game 3: The Cave [PC] - ~8.5 hours

An charming light, puzzle-platformer from Double Fine. The voice-over by the titular Cave added a great deal, as did the constant sprinkle of humorous details found in the Cave (such as nonsensical archaeological displays in the future, and the Tardis embedded in the bedrock), and the capricious nature of the puzzles, with collateral damage ranging from a single death to a hundred million of innocent lives lost. However, this is also one of these games that definitely does not respect your time: You control 3 characters out of 7, in any given play-through, each of which has a section of the Cave specific to them. However, that means that you need to repeat the common sections, including an extended intro sequence, in every play-through. And due to the number of characters, you need to repeat these sections 3 times, and on top of 2 repeat characters. Furthermore, the game offers two endings, which are literally determined at the very last moment, and which consist of seeing either of two pairs of pictures. So to see all endings you need to play through the game at least 6 times, with no variation except for those last two pictures. I couldn't be bothered, so I just looked up the alternative endings here, after playing each character.

Game 3: Dead Space 3

Sort of a mediocre finale for the series. The shift from horror to action is not appreciated, the slow movement doesn't go along well with the hordes of enemies. Also I played this coop and it felt tacked on a lot of ways... too bad. I hope there's a Dead Space 4 one day that is more like the first one...

OP

Game 1: Ori and the Blind Forest -- PC -- 4 Hours last year in June, 3 more this year for a total of 7 hours give or take 30 mins -- Beat on 1/8/2016

I sing praises of this game to my friends on Steam, but I had never actually beat it. I very much enjoyed the four hours already put in, but I felt it was wrong to give such opinions on something I'd never actually played all the way through!

The game plays wonderfully. Tight controls, some AWESOME abilities for someone like me who loves traversal, and gorgeous environments. The "Bash" ability you get early on is probably one of my favorite abilities in any Metroidvania game. Basically, you get the ability to grab any enemy (and lots of different projectiles!) in the game and "bash" them in a direction. Doing this will send you hurling in the direction opposite. This means you can pull all sorts of crazy stunts to reach places you shouldn't yet, or simply have fun staying in the air for a long time. It's fluid while being an excellent and FUN gameplay mechanic.

The ability also comes in handy for the number of escape sequences in the game. I actually really liked these, minus a few moments where you couldn't really know what to do until the next run (falling rocks that instantly kill you). The music is a must in the sequences, so make sure your volume is up!

Story was told mostly through animated cutscenes with some text. It's some sad stuff. Kudos to the team for telling a relatively simple story while still managing to keep me interested in it.

It's not all roses, because combat kind of sucks. You fight enemies by pressing the attack button, which shoots out a little orb of light that homes in on the enemy nearest you and deals some damage. While doing this you're also going to be running around, dodging things at the same time. It makes for some hectic times. That's not the bad part; hectic doesn't immediately = bad. It's just that combat isn't even difficult per se since it's an auto-target, it's just tedious. The way I looked at it was that the enemies were actually there for Bash fodder so I could fly all over the place. It's just the points where you don't have said ability that it stands out like a sore thumb.

Also my PC ran the whole game fine but then started freezing up at the LAST cutscene and that makes me sad because the few frames it was cutting to were big events. I went to Youtube afterwards to watch it. This isn't on the game, but my dumb machine.

Excellent game all-in-all. Very few issues with it once you get a relatively early ability.


Main Post.

Reila said:

I am digging the 'style' of your posts, BraXzy!

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Thanks, I'm really happy with how it turned out

Original Post



GAME 6: The Room Two - 4.5 Hours - 09/01/2016 - Android

The controls are a little clunky, and some of the puzzles are too obscure, but this was a great sequel to The Room with clever puzzles and amazing atmosphere.

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I'll join in finally. I hope that this will help me finish off the horrendous backlog that I have.

Games completed: 1/52


Diablo 3 Ultimate Evil Edition PS4


Work and kids took a major toll on my gaming last year; I felt true to Neogaf form by talking about games instead of playing them. This year I made a rule for myself: 11:30pm onward is gaming. The rest of the day is for work and family but the last 2hrs I'm awake is for me to catch up. My wife is ok with this since I get home early enough to catch some shows or quality time with her and the kids and she likes to play everyone in a while as well. Diablo was the old school dungeon romp that I was craving for a while. I seriously don't understand the hatred this game first got because of the colors being more than brown and black. After Torchlight and others I agree that color gave a breath of fresh air. The gameplay is great, it took me over 30+ hours to beat all 5 acts with some rift and bounty fun.

Rhaknar said:

so how does this work for short games that you are supposed to finish multiple times?

like, I just finished Dyscourse, well 1 run of it. You can finish it in about 45mins - 1 hour, with the idea being to play again with different choices (if you choose to).

is that 1 run enough to count it as finishing it for this thread purposes?

Click to expand...

If you think it is.

Another 3 done! Probably going to slow down a little bit now and watch movies the next few days, i've been playing way too many games this past week x.x

#8 - Vita - Whispering Willows (100% Trophies) Boring story, boring gameplay. I want to play the PS4 version too, but im really not sure i feel like playing this again :/
#9 - PS4 - Back To The Future (Platinum) Not sure why this gets so much hate, it really wasnt THAT bad.
#10 - PS3 - Captain America Super Soldier (Platinum) Finished this in 1 sitting of 9 hours, so its safe to say i enjoyed this one. Pretty good for a movie game.

Just got an Xbox one with MCC and Halo 5, so guess what the first 5 games will probably be...

Game 1 - Halo: Combat Evolved
Game 2 - Halo 2
Game 3 - Halo 3

And another one down today. 52, here I come

Game 4: Tales from the Borderlands Episode 1

What a charming start to the season. It feels as if Telltale really got the Borderlands world and inhabitated with really interesting characters. Having two unreliable narrators telling their version of a story may be an old trick but it's one that is working really well. Liked it a lot better than some of their other efforts in the past (WD S2, Back to the Future,...) Hope the quality of the other episodes is similar.

OP

Original post


4. Shadow Complex Remastered (PC, 2015) - 7:23
Completed on Normal difficulty. Final score 4968231, 77% items collected.

I bought Shadow Complex years ago for the 360 once it became clear it was never coming to other platforms. I managed to play an hour or so of the game, found it generally likable, and then completely forgot about it and moved on to other games. I've always thought I should return, but there was always some other game that was more interesting at the time. And then Epic announced Shadow Complex Remastered and said they were giving it away for free on PC for a limited time.

I might be the only person on the planet who finds it easier to slip into a game on PC than firing up the TV, receiver and console, and waiting for a game to start. But that's apparently what it took for me to get around to finishing Shadow Complex, and not a moment too soon. For the most part, I loved it. It's a game that does collectibles right, with many of them directly improving your abilities. It's also a game that does exploration right, turning each collectible into a little puzzle to solve. It doesn't overstay its welcome, and even its minor flaws--wonkiness with aiming at enemies outside your place of action, character models that haven't aged well, a lightweight story--do nothing to detract from its charm.

chrominance said:

I might be the only person on the planet who finds it easier to slip into a game on PC than firing up the TV, receiver and console, and waiting for a game to start.

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Fear not! It's the same for me.

Game 1: LEGO Marvel Super Heroes (PS4) (Started 1/6/16 / Finished 1/9/16)
So this is the first Lego game I've touched in maybe 5 years. The last two Batman and Indiana Jones left a bad taste in my mouth. This though was excellent. The open world, the talking legos, the variety of characters and powers. This is an excellent game and it has revived my interest in the series. Though Wolverine now wearing his hood is always weird to me.

OG Post

chrominance said:

I might be the only person on the planet who finds it easier to slip into a game on PC than firing up the TV, receiver and console, and waiting for a game to start.

Click to expand...

Ohnono. I gladly start games on PC but I have to force myself to move to the TV and play console games. When I've started them it's all fine, but the way to get there is long and rarely traveled.

Lets do this!

Game 1: Xenoblade Chronicles X - In progress

OP

3. The Order: 1886- I bought this on sale months ago for $20 and this 52 games thing finally got me the motivation to finish it. It's really really bad. Like bafflingly bad. Even the visuals look pretty ugly artistically and everything's ruined by the slow frame rate, letter boxing, and weirdo filter. Characters eyes give everything a bad uncanny valley effect. I'm glad I finally finished it though because now I won't have backlog anxiety and I never need to think about it again. Not worth $20, maybe worth $10 just to see how a bad developer can ruin an interesting concept in every way.

I do think it's an interesting concept though. I would be open for a sequel as long as Ready at Dawn is kept far away. This could work well as a Saturday morning cartoon, an over the top action game, or even just another third person shooter that doesn't do everything wrong. I doubt we'll be seeing anything else from RAD and I kind of hope we don't. This game gives off all kinds of pretentious feelings for me and the way they soured to its deserved reception makes them hard to respect.

If anyone's on the fence and looking for a new game to get to their 52, don't make it this one lol

3/52, Platinum Trophy, Finished January 9th

OP

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Game #3: Dark Souls SOTFS (PS4) 35 hrs 8/10 Story Completed 1/6/2016

I enjoyed the the first half of the game much better the second. After Drangleic Castle I was burned out on the game so I rushed to the end and have no desire to look into the DLC areas. It was still an enjoyable Souls experience but I might wait to pick up Dark Souls 3 for this summer or even 2017.

Games I'm working on...

Witcher 3
Tearaway Unfolded
Majora's Mask 3D

Master Post


Game 1: Heroes Rise: The Prodigy - 4 hours - January 9th, 2016
I was having a monumentally hard time sleeping last night, so what was my genius remedy? Why, buying the Heroes Rise Trilogy for my phone! Some light reading before bed always helps right? Unsurprisingly, it did jack-all to help me sleep. It did however provide me a few hours of mild entertainment. As a CYOA game, Heroes Rise is fairly competent. The writing isn't great, but it's decent enough. Two notably poor aspects to the writing are the cringe-worthy inclusion of the word "slugger" as an all-purpose swear word and the utterly inspiring hero-inhabited city the game is set in, "Millennia City." Otherwise, as a CYOA, the choices you get to make and the way they affect the narrative are actually pretty engaging and fun. I had a decent amount of fun choosing the ways "I" reacted, upgraded my powers, pursued romance and hell, even what my costume looked like. One final complaint would be that the visual presentation is barebones. The game is literally paragraphs of text with radio buttons for the choices and a secondary menu for the RPGish stats. Sure, it's a CYOA game, so arguably it doesn't need great visuals. Better left to the imagination like in the CYOA books of old right? Well, maybe. However, I think Inkle's work in games like 80 Days and Sorcery! tell us that we can have compelling choice-based narrative games that still look beautiful. Overall though, I enjoyed my time with the game (hell, the whole trilogy only cost me $7.99), and I'm looking forward to the next installment.
Should I play Heroes Rise? Sure, if you're into interactive fiction.

Third game down.

#3. Sailor Moon
Arcade, played via movie theater.

Went and saw Star Wars 7 again with my sister and they had a Sailor Moon beat em up! We spent god knows how much to beat this, lol

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Game 3: Metal Slug 2 (PC) - 2 hours

My first time in this series. Great action setpieces with amazing sprite work and fun gameplay. I was surprised how western the art style feels. Only the controls for the vehicles are a little bit weird and the bosses are eating too much damage. Other than that, the arcade style game structure kinda becomes redundant on current platforms. Continues are endless because of virtual coins and you have too few lives to realistically get through it without continues anytime soon. Something like Contra made more sense in that regard, but it's still fun.
Though I didn't really get how you're supposed to save the prisoners? They keep running away.

Finished two games today, so I'm going well!

Game 2: Kirby's Adventure Wii (Kirby's Return to Dreamland) - January 10th
This is the third Kirby game I've played through, after having a great time with Epic Yarn and liking Triple Deluxe and I have to say this is my least favourite. I don't mind the lack of difficulty, but the levels are just too straightforward. It was fun enough but I'm also kind of glad to be done.

Game 3: Until Dawn - January 10th
I'm very much a gameplay first type of person, but I really, really enjoyed this. There were a couple of minor annoyances (the one character I lost died for no real apparent reason) but overall I would easily recommend the game. Would love a sequel, or even a similar game with a different theme.

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Game 2: Emily is Away - 34 minutes - January 9th, 2016
I honestly only picked this up because Trending Gamer of the Year, Greg Miller had it second on his top games of the year . I knew it was short, but holy moly I didn't realize it was this short. Anyways, Emily is a weird little game. From what I've read after finishing the game, it seems like a lot of the "choice" is very much illusory, which is definitely disappointing. But without delving into that, I actually enjoyed my half hour with the game. I'm finishing my last year of college right now, and my ending cut particularly deep as it really reminded me of some conversations I've had over the past few years dealing with waning friendships. Above all, Emily is a really creative endeavor. I love the idea of a game based around an IM client, probably because I remember using them so well. It may not be the "gamey-est" of games, but it's a cool idea that could certainly be expanded on with other similar CYOA-ish games (texts, emails, letters, etc). Sure, it's probably not the greatest game I've played in recent months, but it made me feel something and think about my real life relationships, and that's more than most games do. So it has something going for it.
Should I play Emily is Away? Sure, it won't take more than an hour of your time.

Claimed. Will give this a try this year.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=190944032&highlight=#post190944032= OP Post. First time doing this and for the first 10 days, this isn't that bad


1: Black Rock Shooter: The Game (PSP / 1-4-16 / 7-8 hrs)
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- Was always interested in the game because of the song of the same name.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIVX0OUC4Uc
- Humanity is on the brink of destruction. You play as BRS, a kind of super-soldier that humanity has made for situations like this. The story itself is pretty anime, but enjoyable. Really helped that the game didn’t try to overextend itself.
- BRS: The game is a pretty light Action-RPG. Gameplay was pretty fun, although pretty shallow after a few hours. The game itself was pretty easy overall, I never really struggled with anything the game threw at me. The game throws you lots of healing items and during the tail end of the playthrough, I did find a set of abilities that made the final boss irreverent.
- 3.5 / 5

2: Bastion (PC / 1-5-16 / 4-5 hrs)
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- Bought in a Humble Bundle years ago, probably one of the first few ones before Humble tried to expand
- You’re playing as The Kid after the Calamity, trying to figure out what happened and what you can do after the Calamity happened. The Kid just fights on.
- Really like the art direction with this game, graphics are really pretty. The narration does put you in a different light than just having cutscenes playing out. You get more out of it with the story being told through 2nd person narration.
- The game play takes play across various levels. It’s more of a beat-em-up style game taking place on an isometric playing field. Along the ride, you get various weapons and abilities and none feel too broken or out of place. During the game, there are various quips that the two side characters tell about a lot of weapons and items you find in the game which is kind of cool. Expands the lore a bit. It’s a little more motivation to try and get all the items. If you don’t want a harder challenge, there’s No-Sweat mode which means unlimited continues. Or if you want a tougher challenge, there is the shrine, where you can turn on buffs for the enemies like damage, added status effects, etc. Can play to your liking.
- 4 / 5

3: Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;birth2: Sister’s Generation ( ~15hrs Normal End / 1-9-15 / PSVita)

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- Beat the first one, wasn’t impressed at all about it’s gameplay, then saw this game in the winter sale for $8 and decided to take another shot at the series.
- Story is really, really generic and pretty anime. Just 4 little sisters trying to save their older sisters and trying to save their world in the process.
- Gameplay is really improved from the first game but still doesn’t really matter much further in the game. There is a guard break system in place, where if you attack the enemy enough, they break and take more damage until their next turn. It really isn’t useful vs. bosses though since their guard break gauge is so big that you’ll kill them sooner just spamming SP skills. Other than that, you get 4 controllable characters instead of 3 and there are so many party members for this kind of game, although you’ll never end up using all of them.
- They did include a side-game called Stella’s Dungeon that allows you to get items when you’re not playing the game, but if you don’t plan on playing this game multiple times, then it doesn’t show its usefulness fast enough.
- Will probably try Re;Birth3 once it goes on sale again, this game was worth the $8 but I don’t think I would pay more than that, it’s still a pretty mediocre RPG that has a lot of gamer/anime/otaku jokes that I could handle. Also,there was a lot of recycled content in this game. I expected some because it was a sequel but just within its own game, there were quite a few recycled levels and a lot of reskinned enemies. Doesn’t sit well with me.
- 3 / 5

Complete: 14/52

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Game 01: Binary Domain (PS3) ★★★★☆
Duration: 10hrs
Beat main campaign

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Game 02: King of Thieves (Android) ★★★☆☆
Duration: ~20hrs
Beat level 96

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Game 03: Rain (PS3) ★★★☆☆
Duration: 5hrs
Complete 100%

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Game 04: Bulletstorm (PS3) ★★☆☆☆
Duration: 12hrs
Beat main campaign

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Game 05: Final Fantasy XII International Zodiac Job System (PS2) ★★★★☆
Duration: 50hrs

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Game 06: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (PS3) ★★★☆☆
Duration: 5hrs

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Game 07: Her Story (PC) ★★★☆☆
Duration: 2hrs

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Game 08: Clash Royale (Android) ★★★☆☆
Duration: ~10hrs

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Game 09: Yakuza (PS2) ★★★★☆
Duration: 15hrs

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Game 10: Phoenix Wright: Justice for All (DS) ★★★★☆
Duration: 20hrs

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Game 11: KINGDOM HEARTS Unchained χ (Android) ★★★☆☆
Duration: ~5hrs

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Game 12: Alto's Adventure (Android) ★★☆☆☆
Duration: ~5hrs

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Game 13: Darksiders 2 (PS3) ★★★★☆
Duration: 35hrs

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Game 14: Puppeteer (PS3) ★★★☆☆
Duration: 10hrs

Game 6: Azure Striker Gunvolt [3DS] --- Roughly 5 hours played.



Alright, this is a game I came expecting to be average at best and I the game left with a better impression than I expected. It's not amazing, but it was an enjoyable experience. Azure Striker Gunvolt is a pretty solid game when it comes to core mechanics. The gameplay just works and flows very well, so if gameplay is all you care about in gaming, you might enjoy this. Sure, the combat is a bit repetitive, but the game's level design makes up for it, with each stage being rather unique. Another great thing about ASG is that the game's HUD looks damn good. The visuals of the game, average art style and character designs aside, are really good.

Music-wise, the game is really so-so. For a game that is clearly inspired by Mega Man Zero, I was expecting a better soundtrack. There are one or two songs that are sorta good, but that's about it. Also, nothing wrong with Japanese Pop Music, but listening to J-pop randomly during boss fights was... I dunno. I am nitpicking, though.

On the negative side, this game has a lot of stuff I loathe about anime. First, the game is pretty much a shonen anime in game form and shonen has to be one of the most drab anime genres. What that means is that the characters are as uninteresting as they get and the story is meh, to say the least. Also, Japan... Can you please stop with the lame loli characters? Geez. ALSO, that boss rush in the last levels was ridiculous! You don't put a boss rush in a game with that many tough bosses in a row without giving the player either checkpoints or plenty of healing items.

Lastly, so...
So yeah, this game is a bit better than I expected, but still not all that great. Inti Creates have done a lot better in the past.

OP

Game 3: Mario & Luigi: Dream Team Bros (3DS) - 36 Hours. Finished on 10/1/2016
Well, I ended up finishing this right after Paper Jam since I was in a Mario RPG mood, I had stopped playing it shortly after it came out at roughly 20 hours, so I don't really remember what the first half of the game was like, except lots of tutorials. Anyway, for the second half, the regular combat was great, dream world exploration was OK, Giant Battles are way too slow, anything that requires gyro controls is bullshit, and I was surprised how easy the final bosses were. Overall I enjoyed the last half of the game.

Claimed! Now I just have to get my backlog into a catalog. Does that count as #1 if I complete it?

Game 01: | SquareCells | - | January 3 | - | 4 hours |
I simply adore the Hexcells series so this was an easy buy. I never got really stuck on any puzzle in Hexcells but that happened here! More than once I got so stuck that I actually had to take a break and come back later to solve it. While I'd put any Hexcells game above this, it's not that far behind. I really liked it.

Game 02: | LittleBigPlanet Vita | - | January 8 | - | 5-ish hours |
I love LPB and this could have been such a good game in the series. It has a couple of nice themed worlds, some really fun ideas (that triangle car level was amazing) and it looks absolutely fantastic. It has a pretty boring story but I could have seen past that if the gameplay was any fun. But it isn't. It had to have all the Vita gimmicks and is therefore horrible to actually play. You have to touch stuff all the time while also controlling Sackboy normally. Often on a time limit! I have a hard time holding this console comfortably during "normal play", so imagine trying to touch stuff all over the huge screen, all over the back pad while also trying to platform through the game normally at the same time. It made me feel like I was gonna drop the Vita any second.
You can see the remains of a good game behind all the gimmicks and that made me continue playing, which is a decision I regret. I ended up utterly hating the game. Thankfully it was a pretty short game.

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Game 01: Shadowrun Returns / Android / Januari 10


7.5/10

Sadly enough the game won't straight up show me how much time went into completing the campaign, but looking at my savefiles it should be about 14 hours.

A top down, turn based RPG set in a cyberpunk/ fantasy world where races as trolls, dwarves and elves live together with humans in cities ruled by massive corporations.
i played a female elf decker (hacker) with a bunch of cybernetic implants and a focus on pistols.
The setting and the worldbuilding were spot-on but sadly enough the story was a bit lacking and pretty cliché, especially in the first half of the game. The second half added some interesting plot twists which saved the story for me.

One thing thet really bothered me is that you never build up a relationship with the other Shadowrunners that you hire to join your squad.
Shadowrunners are mercenaries and the game treats them like it as well, you don't get any backstory on them, you don't develop a relationship with them and if one of them happens to die, you just hire another one for the next mission without any disadvantages or consequences.
Lorewise this makes perfect sense, but it still bothered me nonetheless...

Gameplaywise Shadowruns plays as a light version of games like Xcom: Enemy Unknown.
i played the game on Normal difficulty and this proved to be way to easy during the first half of the game. The difficulty ramps up during the second half of the game but mostly because of the increased number of enemies you face at once.
There is a pretty big difficulty spike during the last 2 missions of the game, this made playing on Normal difficulty more fun and challenging.

All in all Shadowrun returns is a pretty good and fun game but it has some flaws holding it back (short linear campaign, no side missions...)
Apparently the DLC campaign Shadowrun: Dragonfall fixes a lot of these issues so i look forward to playing that game in the future.

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Game 4: Spooky's House of Jump Scares [PC] - ~3.5 hours

While I initially picked up this free game for the purpose of getting some practice playing FPS with a Steam Controller, it was enjoyable enough that I stuck all the way through. The game is a very simple horror-game, in which you progress through 1000 rooms in the titular Spooky's mansion. Along the way, you will be greeted by adorable card-board cutouts of ghosts and the like, which pop out at unexpected times, and which caused me to jump in my chair a number of times. However, the cute card-board cutouts are soon replaced with more menacing forms, and the dark nature of the mansion is slowly revealed through environmental story telling and notes left by other people. However, the basic game-play revolves around moving through roughly 1000 randomly selected rooms, selected from a much smaller subset, and you therefore end up going to the same room dozens of times. Furthermore, the game operates in extremely predictable cycles of empty rooms, then a threat repeated across several rooms (typically evaded simply by moving quickly to the nearest exit), and then a quiet section again, for 100 rooms, which is then followed by a save station. Consequently, the game becomes a bit tedious, and would probably have been more impactful if it involved half the current number of rooms or less. However, the game does shine in good use of music and minimal aesthetics to create a, at times, very creepy / scary atmosphere.


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Game 5: Jotun (PC) | 6 Hours | 01/10/2016 | 3.5/5



Jotun is an action adventure indie game developed by Thunder Lotus Studios where you play as Thora, a fallen viking warrior who must impress the Gods in order to reach Valhalla. The structure of the game is that you go to different levels to collect a Rune within it, where once you obtain these Runes you can unlock a door that leads to a large boss character called the Jotun where in defeating all five Jotun can you finally impress the Gods.

The game is wonderfully presented with hand drawn sprites and a great art style with the focus on a large sense of scale. In every level or so the camera will zoom out to showcase some very large thing to make you seem like the incredibly tiny viking warrior you are. Similarly, all the 'Jotun' are gigantic creatures which set up fun David and Goliath boss fights an example here. The only real drawback of this is that sometimes it's too easy to not see where your tiny ass character amidst all the other shit on screen, leading to some "Where the fuck am I?" happenstances.

On the whole, the gameplay is good. Thora has a quick weak attack and a strong attack that must be charged. She has a roll to dodge incoming attacks which can be used to cancel her weak and strong attacks and which has enough recovery that it isn't too good of a move. Outside of that, you get 5 Blessings from the Gods which are magic attacks that run on finite uses for each versus a magic bar system. Each Blessing ranges from a speed/power buff, a trident attack to a heal. You need to find these blessings within the levels, and sometimes they are find/hard to get to, despite being on the map.

Levels are designed well. Levels can range from big open spaces to tight structured areas and they usually have their own gimmick, from a large open icy lake where a large sea serpent erupts from beneath to attack you, to an area of clouds which has you strike crystals to create lightning constellations to continue your progress.

Overall, its a good game. It's 6 hour run time makes it not overstay it's welcome. There are some dumb things such as not being able to see where you are on the pause screen's map. The only way to extend your life is to find Ithunn's apples in the levels but they are not marked on the map and are usually hidden in obtuse areas, which can be frustrating for some levels. Beyond that however, at 15 bucks it is worth checking out if you're interested, at least on a sale.

Okay, first week is done. I had a week off work, and I managed to complete 4 games. I'm guessing this momentum will slow down a bit in the coming weeks...

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1. Resident Evil: Revelations (11 hours). Since RE4 hit, it's hard for me to be impressed with a RE title, but this was definitely an improvement from the last one I played (5). The cruise ship was a good setting, shame you had to revisit the areas so many times and you had to backtrack on numerous occasions. The gunplay was ok, but it lacked the oomph of RE4 and some of the creature designs were very uninspired. The best new addition is Raid Mode, which mixes elements from Mercenaries with random loot. You level up, sell and buy weapons, and find rare ones by (re)playing levels. You can also do this co-op.7,5/10

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2. Mirrormoon EP (8 hours). This is a minimalistic space exploration game, where the first hour is probably the most interesting. You're on a planet and you have to figure out a long puzzle. Here you learn all the mechanics you will find on other planets. After this, you switch over from side A to B, and you have to figure out the control panel in your spaceship. The game has a 'show, not tell' approach, so you're randomly pushing buttons to see each function. After you figure out how to space travel, exploration starts. Once you cross over to side B, you get access to a galaxy full of planets. What you find there is random, so it could be an actual puzzle, or nothing besides the exit. Once you touch the exit orb, you get to name the star if you're the first exploring it.
So there's a community angle too: everyone playing at the same time, is in the same 'season'. The actual goal of side B is to find an observatory, which has a consellation map that leads you to the 'anomaly' planet. Even though you can explore planets indefinitely, this is the 'ending' to the game. If you visit the Steam forum for the game, you can find help with other players in the same season. For instance if you can't find an observatory or the anomaly, they can help. This is a very interesting experiment. Only big downside is that most planets are very similar and repetition sets in fast. I played it for 8 hours because I wanted to find an anomaly, but if you want to get what this game is about, 1 or 2 hours will suffice. The point of this game isn't really to 'complete' it, or see the ending, it's about exploration and the sense of wonder to figure out how everything works. 7/10

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3. Life is Strange (17 hours) Dontnod showed promise with Remember me, and with Life is Strange, they're one step closer to greatness (but not quite there yet). I liked episodes 1-4 a lot, with emotional moments that hit like a brick, but the finale ended up how I feared. Basically they 7,5/10

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4. Wolfenstein: The Old Blood (9 hours). The New Order was last year's big surprise. It was one of the best shooter campaigns in years, so The Old Blood had a lot to live up to. It starts off on the wrong note, with an opening section that drags on for a while and even feels a bit out of place. After this segment the game quickly gains momentum though, and before long the excellent encounter design from TNO is back. It always feels great when you manage to stealth kill the commanders, to prevent them from getting back-up. And what that's done, it's time to dual wield your shotgun and go ham on the remaining enemies. Towards the end the game introduces , which is a great way to mix things up a bit. Final boss is surprisingly hard, but overall I had a great time with The Old Blood. If you're hungry for a quality fps and you loved TNO, then this is a no brainer. 8/10

It's a little bit later than I was hoping, but I finally finished my first game of 2016


1. Assassin's Creed Syndicate (Finished 1/10/16, playtime 37+ hrs, story completed, overall game completion 70%) - I got this game as a Christmas present last year as I'm a big fan of the series and have pretty much played every game in the series (except for the handheld games, Chronicles series, Rogue, and Brotherhood) since it's inception in 2007. Overall I have to say that this game is (for now) my new all time favorite entry in the series topping both Black Flag & 2 as I really enjoyed this game's story and improved gameplay mechanics (I'm loving the new fluid combo based combat system which has nice little touches such as enemies interacting with the environment when struck) not to mention it's setting of Victorian London. ★★★★★

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Game 06: The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings

After a brief detour through some of last year's more notable games, I finally got around to playing this again in preparation for a relaunch of Wild Hunt. To shake things up a bit, I decided to give Iorveth's path a spin for a change (I did Iorveth on my first playthrough years ago, but have since defaulted to Roche because it offers my preferred world state - ). Granted, it's not perfect, but then none of the endings really are. What's more, in order to get the few achievements I had unfinished, I got to see .

All in all, a relatively quick run, although I did have to reload a bit because of conflicting story-linked achievements (or because getting the achievement left the game in a state I could not accept).

Guess I'll give myself a bit more time before jumping back into Wild Hunt. I doubt I'll use this new save (as I said, I already have a nice master world state for the first two games from early last year).

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Game 2 - Amplitude [PS4] ★★★
It's funny that my first taste of where it all began for Harmonix comes as they're fading (sadly) into obscurity after taking the world by storm. I've played Guitar Hero with a regular controller before and thought that there's some fun to be had in that format, somewhere, and it turns out Amplitude is it. The default control scheme initially seemed too bizarre to be true, but when the difficulty ramps up, it's easy to see why the extra dexterity of three fingers is needed over using one thumb and quickly becomes second nature. I had a lot of fun with it, but the short, samey tracklist only throws up a couple of tracks that really stand out. Trying to keep a combo going when you can't see any of the other tracks feels unfair, most of the powerups are rubbish, and sometimes you don't even want to switch tracks because you'd have more fun jamming along with the one you're on. I recently played through Guitar Hero Live, and with it being simplified to a 3 button wide track, the similarities are now even closer. But Amplitude simply isn't as good as playing one part of a song the whole way through.

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Game #5: Please, Don't Touch Anything (PC, BulkyPix, 2015) - ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆

Pretty good game overall, though I found that I began to hit a wall at some points and it made it somewhat tedious an experience. I didn't get every ending, but I did get about as many as I felt satisfied finding. I was also discouraged to find out that I was already locked out of "all endings", haha.

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5. Read Only Memories (PC, 2015) - 4:01 (2:38 in 2015)
All Good Things ending.

Let's get the annoyances out of the way: the interface is a bit clunky. For a game so heavily text and dialogue-based, it might seem like a minor oversight to have better dialogue skip options than "hit Enter a bunch of times to make text go away slightly faster," but it's a real pain in the ass if you ever find yourself replaying a section of the game. I also would've appreciated a quest log that told me how to turn in certain quests, which would've saved me from the aforementioned replaying.

Okay, cool, nitpicks done. I really liked Read Only Memories. As point-and-click adventures go, it's a bit heavy on the visual novel aspect and pretty light on puzzles, but that suits me fine, to be honest. It becomes apparent very quickly that the real reason to play Read Only Memories isn't its brain teasers, it's the meditations of transhumanism and its colourful, mostly endearing case of characters. Turing, the first sapient artifical intelligence, is a lovely sidekick to have throughout your adventure. I haven't played the game multiple times to confirm, but based on what I've read, you almost mold Turing's personality during the game: act interested in his lectures and treat his concerns with sympathy, and he'll return the sentiment in kind. Act another way, and you make Turing into something less... human. It's not a new trick for adventure games, but given the story of Read Only Memories, it's a really nice touch.

The near-future world of Neo-SF strikes a balance between Blade Runner dystopia on the one hand and Star Trek utopia on the other. The technology is better, sure, but otherwise daily life works pretty much like it does in modern-day San Francisco. People have problems, and some of them are serious. Other people drink Hassy drinks every day, blissfully unaware. Read Only Memories does a great job of making its AI-based future seem completely normal and mundane while remaining otherworldly. It also keeps a light tone throughout, even as it gets into the more philosophical and ethical issues at the heart of its transhumanism theme. My favourite whimsical feature: you have a set of futuristic headphones that can connect wirelessly to pretty much any object in the world, including plants, ad billboards, and bar stools.

It's not necessarily a game for everyone, especially if you're tired of point-and-click adventure games (though this one is much less tedious than most). But I quite enjoyed my time in Neo-SF, and look forward to the upcoming free DLC that tacks on a post-game holiday arc.

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Game 4: The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky SC | 40 hours | Finished: January 9th



The wait was worth it. I would've enjoyed it more I think, if I hadn't been playing it alongside Cold Steel. That made the combat really boring and the other gameplay aspects a drag. Still enjoyed it though.
I'll live if we don't get the third game, would rather XSEED focus on the Cold Steel games.
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Game 5: Sword Art Online: Lost Song | 25 hours | Finished: January 10th



I'd heard the impressions from JP GAF but refused to believe them.. but the game did turn out to be disappointing. It could've been great but a lot of things seemed rushed and incomplete.
Hopefully Hollow Realization is better.

OP

Game 4- Until Dawn (8 Hours, Completed January 10)



I was super excited about playing this one, especially on my birthday today with friends. I absolutely loved the concept and presentation, and the actors gave great performances. I was intrigued by the story and definitely thought it was intense up until that twist around the halfway mark. It just didn't make any sense and from that point on the intensity kind of deteriorated for me. That said, I still enjoyed the game overall. It had a ton of potential that it didn't live up to in some ways, and I would love to see a sequel that improves on it.

8/10

Game 4: Cradle (PC) - 7 hours
1/10/2016 Super interesting world, but loads of technical issues on PC. Of all things, the framerate we 20 fps better when having a controller plugged in... The ending was not great at explaining itself. I realize part of the fun of this type of game is to really suss out the details on your own, but had to go look at an explanation to get it. The puzzle rooms were garbage though and the game would have been better at 3 hours with none of those in it at all. 3/5

OP

Game 2: Kirby's Dream Land -- Gameboy -- 30 Minutes -- Beat on 1/9/2016

Putting a game that took thirty minutes to beat onto this list almost feels like cheating. But there is a reason: I legitimately bought this off the eShop one night last year, then proceeded to never boot it up. Not even once. So, in my mind, this is almost a better achievement than finally finishing Ori. :lol

For being twenty-four years old, the game is still fun. Though the very first thing that popped into my mind when I finished was, "I wonder how the people who bought this for $30+ dollars when it first launched felt." The times, they have-a-changed. Like, for the $4 I paid for it, yeah. Subjectively worth it. It's enjoyable. If I paid $10 or more, though, I'd probably feel kind of bummed. How did you guys do it with games that weren't endless like Tetris?

There are five stages to go through. Though technically four, as the last stage is just a hub where they pull a Megaman X and have you re-beat the first four bosses before moving on to King Dedede. Not going to lie, I actually died at least once in every world that wasn't the first. Being a Kirby title, I was still able to beat the game without resetting. But the difficulty was still there, at just the right level to make for an easy game that isn't just a boring cakewalk. It keeps you engaged.

Kirby didn't have his now character-defining copy abilities in his original title. This is the reason I never played it as a kid! Crystal Shards being my first Kirby game, a Kirby without duo-copy abilities (much less ZERO copy abilities!) sounded boring. I can appreciate the simplicity in Dream Land now. It certainly made boss battles more "intense" than what we have now, since they were balanced around nothing but suck/spit.

After beating the game, it told me to press Up+A+Select at the title screen for "New Game." Doing so loaded up what one can only define as the hardest Kirby game I know of... also one of the must un-fun experiences I've had with Kirby. I'm tempted to go through the again on this dumb-hard-mode just to say I did, but I don't know. It really isn't that fun to me. I'm not going to say this detracts from saying I beat the game, since I see it as an extra mode ala Zelda Master Quest.

Final thoughts: Would I suggest the game to someone? Yes. Though I wouldn't suggest they buy it, as I would much rather give them my hard copy of the game with a GBA to play it on. It feels like a game you can most truly enjoy and appreciate whenever no money has been put into it. $4 won't kill anyone, but it may be just enough to jade one's view.




Currently Playing:

The Stanley Parable
Ys: The Oath in Felghana
Bloodborne


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Game #6: Pokémon Picross (3DS) - ★★★★★★★☆☆☆

It's really hard for me to not enjoy Pokémon Picross. I consider Picross probably one of my favourite types of games Nintendo makes, up there with The Legend of Zelda, EarthBound, Mario, Metroid, and Kirby. And while this game was quite solid mechanically, its flaws were numerous and sometimes without proper justification. First off, the game did not allow you to navigate menus using buttons, yet you could use buttons to play the game. Secondly, to basically "own" the game, you pay about $30 - about what I paid for Picross DS, but unfortunately, it wasn't quite as content-rich. Perhaps most annoying is the game's mission mechanic, where you get in-game currency or special puzzles for doing certain things in a level. Unfortunately, some of the missions require you to use a power-up, all of which do nothing more but make the game easier. Now I do not mind that these powers exist, but I find it loathsome that in order to get 100%, I would actually need to make every level easier than they already are! Despite all of the complaining though, it's Picross! It's several hundreds of brand new puzzles! Even a flawed Picross game is at least worth playing. Oh, and to clarify, I got to the credits in 2015, but I did not consider it completed until I got every Pokémon and every special puzzle tile (which I just did).

Finished my first game. At this rate I'll be lucky to hit 25 games.


The Walking Dead: Season 2 | 11th Jan | 5/5 | Loved it. Clem has to be p4p one of the best video game characters of all time.

Game 2:

-Platform: PC
-Completed on: 11/01/2016
Time: 76 minutes (based on Steam time)
Completion Status: Main game complete
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# Another weird little indie game that plays on expectation and subversion. Pony Island has two core mechanics of the Programming and the Platforming with both strung together via weird and new set pieces. The game starts off strong but does start to lull towards the middle as the 2 play styles becoming a little repetitive. The platforming segments feel more like a chore after the second power up, as they never change after that. Programming does not suffer as much with the puzzles getting deeper in logic, but too became more of a speed bump. I really liked my time with the game and despite pacing issues it really ends on a very strong note. Going to play again to try get collectibles and maybe explore some of the other sections.

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Game 03: Hardware Rivals [PS4] (+15h, working towards getting the platinum)

2*

After being underwhelmed by the beta the full game didn't really change anything to make me change my stance. It's a boring vehicle shooter with forgettable music, flawed controls and balancing issues. It looks nice and the online is stable from what I've played, it's hard to come up with more positive things to say. I'll still stick with it till the end just to get the platinum trophy but I'm not going to have a great time doing it.
I find it offensive that this is priced at 19,99€ with only 4 maps and 2 veichles (the other 2 variants don't really change a whole lot), so far it's the worst I've played this year.

Triggerhappytel said:

2016 Summary (part 1)

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3. Everybody's Gone to the Rapture (PS4) - 9th January - approx. 4-5 hours, completed one playthrough and got only 2 trophies
I'm still fairly new to the whole 'walking simulator' genre, but when they're as well done as this then I'll gladly play more. The main attraction is the utterly gorgeous visuals and the incredible soundtrack - the choral music was so perfect for the story and tone, and I was nearly brought to tears a couple of times with the amazing voice acting, music kicking in and character stories wrapping up, usually in a melancholy way. The gameplay is a little annoying with the incredibly slow walking speed and lack of interaction with anything in the environment, but I was utterly captivated by the premise, I found the story chilling and intriguing and the village of Yaughnton is one of my favourite videogame environments ever. 8.5/10

Currently playing: Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (PS4), Amplitude (PS4)

Game 3: Amplitude. The core gameplay is still great, but the soundtrack leaves a lot to be desired and there's just not all that much to see or do. Full review.

OP

Hmm, it was good but it wasn't that good. By which I mean, I had slightly higher expectations due to the amount GAF brings it up. However, I am glad I played it but I'm gladder that I didn't pay full price.

Let's start with the good stuff: the fact that this is the best FPS campaign of this generation so far. It's so solid, it hops around the world and has a cast of great characters; allies and villains. The length of the levels is also pretty much perfect, just as you feel it's dragging a little bit, it ends. Additionally, the detail included in some of these levels, especially the is pretty impressive. The gunplay is great but not amazing but I appreciated the lack of need for ADS. Lastly, my favourite level was the but it didn't fit so much with the rest of the campaign: somber music and watching Nazis trying to save their fellow soldiers made you see them as humans rather than the "Nazi Scum" the game usually wants you to see them as.

Okay, some of the bad stuff: The sound is absolutely awful. I have no idea who mixed this game but they did a bad job, essentially. It's incredibly tinny and has no space. The guns sound best but only the lower sounding ones but rattles, creaks and alarms sound unbearable. I usually love playing with headphones but I couldn't bear it with this game. For the first half of the game, the environments are pretty repetitive too. Just concrete and ducts. My last complaint, and I'm not sure who else has experienced this but the game made me feel incredibly ill for a while when it started. When I sprinted, my eyes hurt and in the late part of the game, the DOF got out on control completely. Really wasn't pleasant to play at times.

Overall, good shooter with a great campaign. Not blown away so I doubt I'll play Old Blood.

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#1 - One Finger Death Punch - PC, 8 hours
Completion Goal: Complete all student levels, and get at least 1500 kills in any survival mode.

A 2D stick-man fighting game, where you only use two buttons doesn't sound like something that should be good. But One Finger Death Punch proves that simplicity not necessarily equals easy nor boring. In this game you need to survive against hordes of foes coming from the left and the right side of the screen. To kill enemies from the left, use the left mouse button and the right mouse button (X / LB and B / RB on a Xbox 360 controller) to kill stick people from the right. What is amazing about One Finger Death Punch is it feels great to play, even the weakest enemies are a delight to punch down with your fist, sword, a ball or one of the other weapons in this game.

I can highly recommend One Finger Death Punch.

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