Really screwed up last year, made a mess of my free time and then got busier than anticipated in school. Even busier semester coming up, so not anticipating pulling this off, but I'm always game to give it a shot.
Game #1- inFAMOUS: First Light
Rating: ★★★ | Platform: PS4 | Beaten: January 3rd | Time: Roughly 16 Hours
Despite knowing this was going to be one of our Plus games of the month for the PS4, I decided to finally import a copy of the physical version from Europe, because I am a god damn madman. inFAMOUS: First Light is sort of just... more of the worst game in the inFAMOUS series, I guess. It's set in a small part of the same city, uses very similar powers to the Neon powers already in-game, and uses a lot of very similar side missions and activities. The big new inclusion, the combat arena, would be more interesting if the combat in the game itself were more intricate and fun on its own. If anything stands out in the series, it's the traversal stuff and the shard collecting moreso than the just acceptable combat, so it feels weird to make that the core highlight of the game. Regardless, most of my problems with Second Son are still here- there's not enough variety in the enemies and combat encounters to keep them interesting, there's not a whole lot of reason to keep playing the game outside of the very shallow and quickly depleted side stuff, and the city still feels dead. One thing that First Light shines in over Second Son is the writing and story- I much prefer Fetch as a character to Delsin, and her tale felt a lot more compelling in 2 hours of story missions than a whole game of two different branching paths did for Delsin. If there was more effort put into the enemies, or if the game was set in Curdin Cay full time instead of just for brief combat sims and a ten minute segment near the end, I probably would've enjoyed this more. It's no inFAMOUS 2, but I think this one at least edges out Second Son itself in terms of quality to me.
Game #2- Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes
Rating: ★★★ | Platform: PS4 | Beaten: January 3rd | Time: Roughly 4 Hours
I'm far from a devout MGS fan, having only played a handful of the series entries here and there, and somehow managing to avoid any game starring Big Boss up to this point altogether, but while I was content to wait until Phantom Pain for my next Metal Gear playthrough, the Amazon deal was a bit too much for me to pass on, and I ended up buying the demo too. Mechanically, the game is fantastic- leagues ahead of MGS4 in terms of how much you can do and how responsive it feels to do it. I really enjoyed playing out different tactics and strategies, seeing what kind of dumb bullshit I could get up to and how many neat tricks I could pull off. While I didn't play Peace Walker, the in-game audio tapes gave me a pretty clear picture, and I was glad to have them- but even removed from the mess of continuity, I don't think I dig the story of Ground Zeroes or where it's going. It's definitely interesting to see a game attempt to tackle the very serious subject matter presented in the game, but I feel like a lot of it is handled rather poorly. It probably doesn't help that the main reason I come to Metal Gear is dumb anime lunacy and Kojima going full up-his-own-ass taking-itself-to-seriously crazy, and this is sorely lacking in both respects. It makes a pretty good demo for the Phantom Pain, at least- still looking forward to that.
Game #3- Dragon Age Inquisition
Rating: ★★★★★ | Platform: PS4 | Beaten: January 11th | Time: 90:00 on the dot
Bioware has always been my favorite developer, and Dragon Age Origins was my game of the generation for the last gen, having seen me put in well over 2000 hours into it, making it very likely my most played game ever. For the longest time, I thought Bioware could do no wrong. Then Dragon Age II came out, and while the story and characters were great, everything else was...not so much. Then The Old Republic came out, and it had a subscription fee and stepped all over Obsidian's feet and basically destroyed any chance of KOTOR 3. Then Mass Effect 3 came out, and the disappointment was so profound, I almost thought it was time to stop paying attention to the hobby altogether. I
needed Inquisition to be good, and fortunately for me, it's the game that finally broke Bioware's losing streak. The main storyline picks up a number of threads from Origins and II that I was really glad to see not forgotten, like everything involving Corypheus- a character I was worried Bioware would let fade into obscurity and never be mentioned again after Legacy. It was great to see a return to so many locales from Origins, and I really enjoyed exploring the world and putting time into the sidequests. I think the party was overall weaker than most Bioware games, but for every awful Vivenne or Cole, there was a really cool character like The Iron Bull and Blackwall. While I don't think Inquisition is Origins good, it's easily my GOTY for 2014, and has done a hell of a lot to restore my faith in one of my once favorite devs. Now just let us use healing magic again, and we'll be square.
Game #4- Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor
Rating: ★★★★ | Platform: PS4 | Beaten: January 22nd | Time: 19:09
When people have asked me in-person what I think about my time with Shadow of Mordor, I've found the best way to describe my opinion as "It's a terrible Lord of the Rings game, but it's bar none the best Assassin's Creed game ever made". Shadow of Mordor should make me really angry- its frequent and blatant disregard for the lore and the mythos it's been constructed around is appalling, and it fits the franchise thematically about as poorly as one could make it, and I maintain that it would have been much better served as a new IP instead of latching itself to one of the most important pieces of modern fiction, but at the same time, it's hard to care about the window dressings enough to get mad at it, both because Monolith seems to care so little about its own plot, and because the underlying mechanics are so well crafted. It feels like its taken the AC/Batman style combat and naturally progressed it far better than either of those two have in their own series. All three combat styles are viable and fun, and the powers are a blast, while it does a good job of keeping Talion from becoming so overpowered that the Warchiefs and Captains become trivial even as far as the endgame. The Nemesis System is what truly makes this game something special, and it's a system that desperately needs to be in more games- what I assumed going in was going to be a gimmick mechanic that doesn't quite live up to where I would want it to be, ended up delivering on the promises of its potential in every regard. I actually can't wait to see the future of this series, even if it's in spite of it's story.
Game #5- Frog Fractions
Rating: ★★★★★ | Platform: PC | Beaten: January 26th | Time: 00:34
On the surface, Frog Fractions is a generic, boring flash game and could have easily faded away as quickly as it came, but if you can stick out the first couple minutes, it quickly evolves into one of the most wonderfully subversive, absurd, quirky experiences I've ever had in the gaming industry. When I first heard about it a while back on the Giant Bombcast, I knew I needed to play it for myself, and ever since then, I've found my way back to go again once every few months or so. There's not a whole lot to say about Frog Fractions that doesn't go into spoilers for what Frog Fractions even is, so all I'll say is that it's one of the most charming experiences I've played in years, and remains so on subsequent playthroughs, and I urge everyone to give it a shot for themselves. I can't wait to see what comes of the Frog Fractions 2 kickstarter.
Game #6- Diablo 3
Rating: ★★★★ | Platform: PS4 | Beaten: January 30th | Time: ~20-25 Hours (no in-game clock)
Despite my immense love for Blizzard games in-general, I decided to hold off on Diablo III at launch. The build-up buzz and the design philosophies made it seem clear that we could expect a console port to come, and I'd much rather play it there than on my awful PC or laptop, and so I waited- a decision I felt completely validated for as the Auction House turned into a disaster and the backlash towards the game spiked up. When the game finally came to the PS3 last year, I once again waited, reasoning that the announced PS4 port would probably include the Reaper of Souls expansion and that I waited this long, may as well pick it up for my shiny, new system. Now here we are, years after the announcement, and I'm finally getting to play through my "definitive", awaited Diablo, and I've absolutely loved every minute of the experience. Last year, a big part of what ruined my 52 game count was falling down a 600 hour Marvel Heroes hole, but Diablo is in a tier of quality far apart from the F2P game. I played through the game as a female Demon Hunter named Valla for my first playthrough, and I enjoyed every minute- I really had a blast tearing into enemies with dual crossbows, strafe and rapid fire and supported by turrets, all while backflipping all over the place. I made one major mistake, and played through the game on Normal instead of Hard at first, so it ended up being a huge cakewalk, but all-in-all, I can't wait to keep playing more of this. I want to keep taking Valla through higher difficulties, but I also can't wait to see the other classes- Monks sound like a blast, just straight punching demons to death, and I want to try the Crusader too.
I know people (rightfully) complain about Blizzard writing all the time, but the game's story and lore is delightfully cheesy and dumb in all the ways that I love things to be dumb. I think the cast is full of fantastic and memorable characters- all three followers, Leah, Belial, Azmodan, Imperius and plenty more make me really hope the Diablo franchise gets more love in the future of Heroes of the Storm.
Game #7- Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls
Rating: ★★★★ | Platform: PS4 | Beaten: February 3rd | Time: ~6-10 Hours (no in-game clock)
Reaper of Souls is pretty much just more Diablo 3, which I really enjoyed, so of course I still really enjoyed my time with Reaper of Souls. I do have quite a few more complaints regarding the story stuff in this one than the last one- namely that Malthael is a really cool design who doesn't really get to do anything, with cringingly awful dialogue. The story kind of glosses over some stuff that could have been really interesting, and ending without one of Blizzard's signature pre-rendered cutscenes and instead with a lame narration was pretty weak. Overall, I still had a blast, and can't wait to start a Crusader and play through these two a second time. Hopefully those rumors aren't true and the Diablo team isn't being shuttered, I'd love to see more games set in this universe.
Game #8- Remember Me
Rating: ★ | Platform: PS3 | Beaten: February 6th | Time: TBD
Finishing Remember Me has been a long time coming. I initially downloaded it when it was one of the month's Plus games a while back, reasoning that even if it wasn't great, I wanted to try out a game with such interesting art direction and new ideas. Unfortunately, the art direction is the only thing worth saying anything positive about in this game; and even that is squandered for half of the game, moving from the gorgeous Neo-Parisian cities to generic, sterilized hallways of buildings and sewers/slums. The story is filled with a cast of incredibly unlikable scumbags, obvious plot twists and a terrible script. The gameplay is complete garbage- the combo system is inherently detrimental to the combat, forcing you to create custom combos that the game itself has difficulty not resetting mid-combo, which ultimately feels like a poor man's, broken Batman game, and then you realize that you can just set a three hit combo to give you health back and shorten the cooldown on your powers and only use that to cheese the game because the game fails to let you finish any longer combos half the time anyway. The generic guard enemies are okay, but the Leapers feel awful to fight, and even worse, the boss battles are some of the most user unfriendly combat encounters I've ever seen in a video game. "You can only hurt this boss by using a power for a couple seconds and then waiting for a 2 minute cooldown, also we're not going to indicate which power that is, and it's not going to make any actual sense, have fun!" I mean, the final boss can only be damaged by attacking a box, and in one stage of the boss, the box becomes invisible unless you use one specific attack, which up to this point has not been used to reveal things that are invisible, and there is no indication that the box is in the arena yet or needs to be found. Throw in problems like framerate dips, broken platforming, script breaking bugs and plenty of others, and it's not hard to see why no one really remembers Remember Me; it's not a failure of a game because it stars a female, minority protagonist, as I've seen people argue in the past, it bombed because it's a shit video game.
Game #9- Star Wars: Republic Commando
Rating: ★★★★ | Platform: Xbox | Beaten: February 8th | Time: 06:34
Star Wars and video games have had a long, long relationship full of incredible experiences and moments, and maybe its just the era I grew up in, but when I think about video games and Star Wars, there's three moments that immediately come to mind; Kriea's deconstruction of morale decisions on Nar Shada in KOTOR 2, the revelation of the player character's name in the original KOTOR, and the opening sequence of Republic Commando, from cloning vat birth to deployment on Geonosis, riding in to the desert battlefield in the open LAAT. No other Star Wars game has come close to recreating the raw intensity of Republic Commando, with its visceral combat, tight pacing, and excellent squad-based dynamics. The game really makes you feel like a Clone Trooper, and each sequence in the game is just dripping with atmosphere. The combat encounters all feel great, and the arsenal of weapons is varied enough for the size of the game that it feels like there's plenty of options, and the intractable environments and squad commands really bring it alive all the better.
The only real problems I have with it is that I wish there was more of it to play. There's only three locations- Geonosis, a derelict Republic Cruiser, and Kashyyyk, and while all three are super varied and awesome, I would have loved to see Delta Squad deploy to more locations across the galaxy and fight in other battles through the war. That said, the game is pretty fantastically paced for the content it does have, and makes each of the three squad members shockingly interesting characters in their own rights. It's a damn shame we never got a sequel to this, but on its own, it stands as one of the finest Star Wars games ever produced, and that's a pretty prestigious list. Hopefully an Imperial Commando is on the radar for the future, now that we're entering into a new age of Star Wars gaming.
Game #10- Star Wars: Battlefront II
Rating: ★★★★★ | Platform: Xbox | Beaten: February 20th | Time: 07:45
Nothing's cozier than wrapping up in some nice blankets in the middle of a snow day, getting some hot chocolate, and blasting through some Battlefront II. Like most shooters before everything became just like Halo/CoD/Gears, there's a little jank to the movement and the general feel of the third person shooter, but at no point does it actually feel detrimental to the game design like some others from that gen. The shooting still feels tight, and I still love the character class, control point style of gameplay. I know that it was a controversial addition at the time, but I still think the Hero units are a neat addition, at least to the single player campaign- they feel a lot more out of place in the Instant Action and Galactic Conquest stuff. Speaking of, the campaign is still one of the highlights for me- the narration as a journal as a member of the 501st is super well written and getting to play the Clones through their transition into becoming Imperial Stormtroopers was a really fun, different take on the franchise.
I'm still wanting to stay optimistic for the next Battlefront game, but I just don't trust DICE, I don't trust EA, and I don't like any of the things we've been hearing so far- from it apparently just being a Battlefield game, to being a first-person shooter, to stripping out classes to make customizable loadouts instead- it just doesn't sound like the Battlefront that I loved, or the Battlefront sequel that I want. Fortunately, no matter what their finished product is, Battlefront II remains one of the best Star Wars games ever created.
Game #11- Marvel Heroes 2015
Rating: ★★★★ | Platform: PC | Beaten: February 27th | Time: 606:32
This game, combined with my class schedule last year, were big parts of what stopped me from finishing my 52 Games Challenge last year- I spent so much time playing Marvel Heroes that I failed to actually finish dozens of games. After 600 hours, I think I'm at a point where, while I'll still be playing plenty of it as new characters and story stuff comes out, it's not going to dominate my year again.
For this year already, I ran through the story from start to finish and maxed the level for X-23, which probably took me around a dozen hours or so? Give or take a few. It's still a really good video game, with minor improvements to where it was when I added it to my list last year.
Game #12- StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm
Rating: ★★★★ | Platform: PC | Beaten: March 1st | Time: ~10-11 Hours
This year sure has been a Blizzard kinda year so far, hasn't it? Diablo III, Reaper of Souls, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, and now, Heart of the Swarm. I decided to wait a little while before playing this one because as much as I loved Wings of Liberty, a big part of the appeal of StarCraft to me has been playing as the Terrans and doing space-trucker shit- which they blew on the last game. Of the three factions, it's the Zerg Swarm that I liked the least. After the trailer for Legacy of the Void reminded me that I hadn't caught up yet, I decided to track down a copy for $20.
I know people give Blizzard stories shit constantly for being really poorly written- but I still consistently love them. I really liked the evolution of Kerrigan as a character, and I liked the idea of evolving your Swarm to create the optimal army. The biggest appeal in the mechanics for me in this game are Hero Units, which I haven't seen emphasized in an RTS game for a long time, but was a mechanic I always loved. I do wish we got to use the non-Kerrigan characters more often, but they were all a lot of fun. Still, I can't help but wish that this was still a game about space cowboys.
Game #13- Batman: Arkham Asylum
Rating: ★★★★★ | Platform: PS3 | Beaten: March 5th | Time: 8.5 Hours
I've probably played through Arkham Asylum a dozen times by now; I own it for both 360 and PS3, and have frequently gone back to it to run through the story again and again. I still have my reservations about Arkham City- I think going open world was a mistake, and I feel like it added too much fat to the combat that made it feel more bloated. Asylum is a fantastically well-developed world, the combat feels great and the whole game is extremely well paced. It's got a lot of those Metroidvania elements that really shine and stand out that the sequels kind of lost, but really highlight how atmospheric and well realized the whole experience is.
I decided to run through this one on hard on my PS3, since that's where my digital copy is and I still hadn't done that on that console yet, so I could net a couple trophies on the way. The hard mode in this one is always entertaining because it removes the counter highlight icons and forces you to pay a lot more attention to the ton of stuff happening on screen, which forces you to play smarter- you still feel like an absolute badass, but you feel like a human badass, whereas the rest of the game makes you feel like a goddamn inhuman terminator; both are really entertaining, but I almost prefer it without the counter signs.
Currently In-Progress:
Jade Empire (Xbox)- Just starting Chapter 3.
Marvel: Contest of Champions (Mobile)- In the middle of Act 2 of 3.
Heroes of the Storm (PC)- Still learning how to play.
Borderlands 2 (PS3)- PS+ version, coming up on the endgame
Hitman: Contracts (PS3)- PS+
Fate/Stay Night (PC)- About 1/3rd of the way through Heaven's Feel.
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow (PS3)- Just started
Hyperdimension Neptunia: Re;birth1- Still relatively early