Game 1:
Broken Age - 5 hours
# Played on MAC, finished 1/1. I've had a problem giving up on P&C games in the past when I've had to look up hints. I was able to get through this one without any hints but also didn't feel like it was too easy or too short. The story, writing and voice acting are top notch and I'm looking forward to part two.
Game 2:
Never Alone - 2 hours
# Played on PC, finished 1/6. I'm enjoying this new trend of educational games that can be enjoyed by adults. A beautiful looking game about a topic I would have been unlikely to be exposed to otherwise. The gameplay left a bit to be desired, unfortunately, with some frustrating platforming controls and some trial-and-error sections.
Game 3:
Valiant Hearts - 6 hours
# Played on PC, finished 1/8. Another educational game about an intriguing and less exposed topic. The gameplay is simple and will doubtfully challenge anyone, but is at least well done for what it is. Charming through and through.
Game 4:
Styx: Master of Shadows - 21 hours
# Played on PC, finished 1/13. Incredible level design marred by some questionable controls. Players into hardcore stealth should definitely play this game. Others may find the unforgiving mechanics a bit too frustrating.
Game 5:
The 39 Steps - 4.5 hours
# Played on MAC, finished 1/22. I would have enjoyed just reading the book instead. Not recommended. The achievements were even bugged.
Game 6:
Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands - 12.5 hours
# Played on Wii U, finished 1/24. I wasn't aware until just recently that this game was different than the PS360 game. Great to suddenly have a new SoT-verse game to play. The game was fun, but about 75% through the limitations on control and camera when using the Wiimote started to become apparent and some frustration set in.
Game 7:
LIMBO - 4.5 hours
# Played on MAC, finished 1/26. Very LTTP on this, but it lived up to the hype. Short but sweet, challenging puzzles that weren't repeated over and over, and a beautiful dark atmosphere mixed with some gruesome humor.
Game 8:
Law & Order Legacies - 8.5 hours
# Played on MAC, finished 1/27. I am a huge L&O junkie, so it's surprising it took so long to get this out of my library. Music and audio/visual cues are true to the series, and the cartoonish depictions of the characters is surprisingly effective. On the other hand, with the exception of Briscoe the portrayal of the characters is mostly passable, and in the case of Benson, pretty bad. The cases are for the most part pretty forgettable, although the overarching story that finally comes together in episodes 6 and 7 is not bad. The L&O game I played in the early 2000s (Dead on the Money) had much more interesting gameplay and the bonus of the actual voice actors. In that game you could fail to build your case and greatly affect the trial. In this game you mostly go through the motions and there seems to be very little effect to your actions in the long run unless you really tank everything. There are a lot better games of this type out there, so it's hard to even recommend this to Law & Order fans.
Game 9:
Hate Plus - 5 hours
# Played on MAC, finished 1/27. The story of Analogue: A Hate Story continued, but with really all semblance of a game pulled out. It's hardly really a visual novel in the sense that there's really no visual aspect. But it is a very good science fiction/political story delivered in a unique way. And I baked a cake.
Game 10:
Cinders - 5.25 hours
# Played on MAC, finished 1/30. The story and writing were interesting enough, but I don't think I'm going to be putting a lot of time into VNs going forward. Not really a genre that engages me.
Game 11:
Life Is Strange - 16 hours
# Played on PC, finished 10/19 - A unique game that definitely tugged at the emotions. For me it unfortunately peaked at Episode 3, but well worth playing through.
Game 12:
Shank - 3.5 hours
# Played on MAC, finished 1/30. A pretty simple beat-em-up. Nothing special, but short enough that it didn't outstay it's welcome.
Game 13:
Borderlands: The Pre-sequel - 20 hours
# Played on PC, finished 2/2. I have a group of 4 that played B2 together for 200+ hours and we just finished our first play through of this one. Not as epic as B2, but MOTS is not always a bad thing.
Game 14:
Resident Evil 5 Gold - 14.5 hours
# Played on PS3, finished 2/5. This is solo main campaign as well as Lost in Nightmares and Desperate Escape. I came into this expecting it would be bad and was pleasantly surprised. It is very far removed from early RE games, and even RE4 - mostly linear areas, no backtracking, and almost no puzzles. But it's fun shotgunning zombies and working through the crazy RE storyline. I'm sure it would have been even better co-op. It's quite a nice package, as well. One bonus scenario that's a throwback to RE1 and another that's a crazy shooting gallery. Then there's a couple of Mercenaries modes that I didn't even touch as well as other content. And I got it through PS+.
Game 15:
Kick and Fennick - 5 hours(? No way of knowing)
# Played on PSVita finished 2/10. A reasonably fun puzzle platformer from PS+. Plenty of challenge in the last two chapters, but no story and a very odd final boss. Worth about $5 if you like these kinds of games.
Game 16:
The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky - 47 hours
# Played on PSVita, finished 2/17. This is
the first JRPG I have ever finished.
Game 17:
Gemini Rue - 9 hours
# Played on MAC, finished 2/18. Fantastic story and a reasonable difficulty for an adventure game. Some very cool pixel art/animation and the music was also impressive for such a small game.
Game 18:
Nihilumbra - 3.5 hours
# Played on MAC, finished 2/19. Sort of the Portal 2 paint levels in a 2d platformer. Very short, and I felt like they could have made the game more interesting by requiring more combinations in the puzzles. Completed story mode and tried the "Void" mode, but it's ridiculously difficult.
Game 19:
Evoland - 4 hours(? Steam glitched the time)
# Played on MAC, finished 2/20. A cute love letter to RPGs. Like DLC Quest, but less cynical.
Game 20:
Jolly Rover - 5.5 hours
# Played on MAC, finished 2/22. A dog and pirate-themed point and click adventure with a difficulty level that felt pretty good. Plenty of puns if you are a dog lover.
Game 21:
Fable III - 21 hours
# Played on XBOX360, finished 2/22. I really enjoy the adventure, exploration and humor in the Fable games. Unfortunately, this one had some odd design choices and a questionable turn to the gameplay towards the end.
Game 22:
Deponia - 11.5 hours
# Played on MAC, finished 2/26. I managed to finish Deponia without any help and it still felt very challenging. A lot of clever and varied puzzles and genuinely funny writing.
Game 23:
Syberia - 9 hours
# Played on MAC, finished 2/27. Needed to look up 2 hints, oh well. The story and setting of the game were intriguing, and I'll play the sequel. The characters, writing and voice acting were very inconsistent, though.
Game 24:
They Breathe - 30 minutes
# Played on PC, finished 3/5. I beat it? Kind of creepy.
Game 25:
Assassin's Creed: Revelations - 14 hours
# Played on XBOX360, finished 3/8. I wanted to go in with an open mind, but in the end this was a mediocre game. It started and ended pretty strong, but other than a few stand-out free running missions that I enjoyed, the middle was pretty uninspired, especially compared to the variety that Brotherhood managed.
Game 26:
Infamous First Light - 5 hours(? No clock)
# Played on PS4, finished 3/11. A nice little slice of Infamous. I'm not generally one for arena fights, but the combat is so fun that I might go back and do some trophy hunting.
Game 27:
Deus Ex: GOTY - 29 hours
# Played on PC, finished 3/17. This game has been in my backlog for so many years, and I'm so glad I finally took the time to finish it. I'm sure I've started it 10+ times, never getting more than halfway through. This time it just clicked and it felt a lot shorter than my final tally. A really amazing game that holds up very well. I can't think of any modern games that have done flexibility of play and choice/consequence as good as this 15 year old game.
Game 28:
Deus Ex: Human Revolution Director's Cut - 36 hours
# Played on PC, finished 3/23. A very worthy follow-up to Deus Ex - you could feel that a lot of care went into creating it. I had a few nitpicks, particularly the worthless choice of endings but overall a great game.
Game 29:
Dead Island - 24.75 hours
# Played on PC, finished 3/26. Time includes the Ryder White DLC. Slicing, mashing and shooting zombies, especially with the wealth of weapon mods available, offers a lot of fun. But without any real additional gameplay variations, the same killing and escort quests get very stale very fast. If you like to try and do side quests in your games, you'll find each area dragging, and doing these additional quests is the only real way to level up your character and feel more powerful. Some focusing of content would have done this game a lot of good. The DLC is actually very interesting as it turns the game into an FPS for the most part.
Game 30:
Time Mysteries: Inheritance - Remastered - 5 hours
#Played on MAC, finished 3/30. I got parts two and three of this series in a bundle so I figured I would chip in on the first game and see what it was like. I had never played a hidden object game before and it was very casual, as expected. It's interesting in that you can skip entire puzzles if you want, and rather than take hints on the hidden object scenes you can switch over to a sort of match-three game. It also used a creepy animation style where it warped the mouths of static images rather than actually make the lips move. I don't think I'll be playing the sequels any time soon.
Game 31:
Dead Island Riptide - 19 hours
# Played on PC, finished 3/31. Part sequel, part expansion pack - you get one new character, boats and some new weapons and monsters, but otherwise the other 4 characters are pulled in from the original game with the exact same skill trees, with some new perks for using specific weapon types . You can even port over your high level character from Dead Island, which I did. It seems the conventional wisdom is this game is not as good as the first, but having played it so recently, I think I enjoyed the second game a little bit better. The world was a bit more compact but was more interesting with varied paths and nooks and crannies to explore. No real major improvements to the gameplay, though, so it suffered from some of the same potential to get stale.
Game 32:
Ori and the Blind Forest - 12 hours
# Played on XBONE, finished 4/2. My actual playtime was around 20 hours due to bugs causing me to have to replay large amounts of the game. Despite all that, I still finished, which says something about the quality of this game. Beautiful to look at and fun to play. I'm sure this will be on my GOTY list.
Game 33:
Rochard - 6.5 hours
# Played on PC, finished 4/5. A fun little physics platformer with a pleasant cartoony look and competent VO. A shame that the devs are gone as I would like to see what they came up with next.
Game 34:
Counterspy - 3 hours
# Played on PSVITA, finished 4/11. Finished the "story" on normal and played a little on advanced. I really like stealth games, but this one had a lot of problems. Load times for the procedurally generated levels were painfully long given the amount of time you spend in them, and performance was terrible for a game that really doesn't look all that good. Some rooms were close to slide-show bad. From a stealth perspective the game really forces your hand to kill, because you can't retrieve the needed items without alerting guards, and there isn't even an option for non-lethal takedowns. A bit upsetting, as I liked the concept of the game.
Game 35:
Metroid Fusion - 5.75 hours
# Played on Wii U, finished 4/11. I'm sure my actual playtime was a lot longer given all the times I died to bosses. Bosses are definitely my weakness in these games. However, with the exception of needing to look up a strategy for
I completed the whole game on my own (with some much needed breaks to calm down
). I was amazed how many secrets and even required paths were completely hidden, but once I figured that out, it became a lot easier to find my way. Despite that, I finished with only 49% item completion, which kind of blew me away. I also played the whole game on the Wii U gamepad, which was a great way to experience it.
Game 36:
Superbrother Sword & Sworcery EP - 4 hours(?)
# Played on iOS, finished 4/26. It's very rare that I manage to finish an iOS game, so it was nice to knock one off the list.
Game 37:
Star Ocean: First Departure - 20 hours
# Played on PSP, finished 5/4. Another JRPG finished! What I was most impressed by here was that I didn't even
meet a lot of the playable characters, much less use them, and the way the game handled different situations based on which characters you had recruited. Plus, there are so many different mechanics and abilities in the game it can get overwhelming, and this was originally a SNES game! It must have really stood out in its time.
Game 38:
Remember Me - 10 hours(?)
# Played on XBOX360, finished 5/10. When this released, I got stuck on a mid-boss about 2/3rds through and stopped playing. Decided to give it another shot and breezed through this time. I don't know what my problem was before, but I guess the combat system finally clicked. This is a decent game that needed some less restrictive environments and some better dialogue. You can easily see how the memory remixes turned into Life is Strange. The gameplay as a whole reminded me a lot of Enslaved, but that game did a lot better job with the traversal and puzzles. The game's strong point is the world it built, as the concept of the memory technology becoming part of everyone's lives works well as a sci-fi story.
Game 39:
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D - 35 hours
# Played on 3DS, finished 5/14. A while back I played this on the Virtual Console but got stuck in the Water Temple, so it was great to get this out of my backlog as well.
Game 40:
The Witcher Director's Cut - 44 hours
# Played on PC, finished 5/30. The release of Witcher 3 got me to return to this game and get past Act 1 for the first time. A fun game with great storytelling, although ultimately a bit too long and too easy on standard difficulty.
Game 41:
The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition - 39 hours
# Played on PC, finished 6/11. Two Witcher games in a row and still not bored. I'll have to go back some time and finish up the alternate path
Game 42:
Batman: Arkham Knight - (no idea)
# Played on PS4, finished 7/5. 100% completion of Story Mode. It's still a Rocksteady Arkham game, so it's head and shoulders above a lot of other games in presentation and gameplay, but it's my least favorite of the whole Arkham series.
Game 43:
Assassin's Creed III - 28 hours
# Played on PC, finished 7/11. This game has 2 things going for it, the rock climbing and the tree climbing. Outside of that it's a very tedious Assassin's Creed game. The Captain Kidd treasure side quests are a lone bright spot in the design, but everything else is very uninspired. The story actually gets interesting about halfway through the game, but then resolves itself in an unsatisfying manner. The new movement controls seem nice at first, until you realize it gives you less freedom and find yourself running/jumping/climbing to places you didn't intend. That said, the designers seem to have a way to compel you to sink time into doing stupid stuff, as witnessed by my playtime.
Game 44:
Just Cause - 9 hours
# Played on PC, finished 7/15. I just wanted to get this out of my backlog so I could play JC2 (and eventually 3). Has a nice big world, but felt dated and clunky. Glad I was able to breeze through the main missions so quickly without having to spend time on sidequests.
Game 45:
Just Cause 2 - 17 hours
# Played on PC, finished 7/19. A marked improvement from the first game and looks pretty great maxed out on PC at 60fps. The world is absolutely enormous even when flying airplanes across it. The gameplay was pretty fun, but I couldn't imagine cleaning up the 70% of non-story content I have left - that would get very old very fast.
Game 46:
10000000 - 6 hours
# Played on iOS, finished 7/21. I escaped, and used every upgrade and some potions to do it. One of those games that traps you into "just one more try."
Game 47:
Escape Dead Island - 9 hours
# Played on PC, finished 7/22. I didn't find this to be as bad as the review let on, but it ended poorly, and what was shaping up to be a mysterious story just became nonsense.
Game 48:
Dying Light - 43 hours
# Played on XBONE, finished 7/26. Make no mistake, this was the true followup to Dead Island, and it improved in just about every department. I had my issues with some of the controls and some of the design decisions, but overall a very fun game and very likely to make it into my top 10 this year.
Game 49:
The Order 1886 - (not sure)
# Played on PS4, finished 8/2. The best thing you can say about this game is that it looks REALLY good. Besides that it's a fairly run of the mill cover shooter with fairly small areas and an over-reliance on quicktime events. The story is intriguing, but ends very abrubtly with a lot of questions left unanswered.
Game 50:
Mafia - 19 hours
# Played on PC, finished 8/2. I don't know if this was just a case of "you had to be there", but this was one of the worst games I've ever played. Clunky controls, unsatisfying gunplay, a sim-like driving model that for 80% of missions only served to artificially lengthen the game, glitches that failed missions, missions you could get stuck in permanently if you didn't do exactly what the game wanted, and to top it off a final boss who had x-ray vision and 100% accuracy. If not for the 52 games challenge I might have given up early on.
Game 51:
Thomas Was Alone - 5 hours
# Played on PC, finished 8/4. Short and sweet. This didn't really live up to the hype, however.
Game 52:
Call of Duty: Black Ops II - (no timer)
# Played on XBOX360, finished 8/5. A pretty typical COD game - pretty fun shooting and weapons and a story that starts off pretty good and then just gets silly.
Game 53:
Mafia II
# Played on XBOX360, finished 8/6. Better than the original game in every way. I had a good time with this one. Still a few issues, but I'm looking forward to the third game now.
Game 54:
Saint's Row - 26.5 hours
# Played on XBOX360, finished 8/20. For an aging GTA clone, it was better than expected - until the rage inducing 4 or 5 last missions. I hope Volition learned the concept of a checkpoint in the sequels.
Game 55:
Saint's Row 2 - 21 hours
# Played on XBOX360, finished 8/25. An improvement over the original in just about every way. They added in a lot of checkpoints, which was very welcome, but overcompensated with overwhelming numbers of enemies and constant cars ramming into your fragile vehicles. Still, much fewer missions that make you want to rip your hair out. The story was pretty good as well, with some very dark turns given the otherwise goofy nature of the game.
Game 56:
Saint's Row the Third - 16.5 hours
# Played on XBOX360, finished 9/8. Another jump ahead, all around. A new engine with a huge graphical leap, better controls, better gameplay, better writing, better everything.
Game 57:
Saint's Row IV Reelected
# Played on XBONE, finished 9/22. This game is practically a different genre than the previous games. A lot of fun, but the way side quests were managed made it feel a bit inferior to SR3. The parody and comedy were fantastic, though, with tons of references back to the first three games and scifi video games and movies.
Game 58:
Saint's Row IV Gat out of Hell - 4.5 hours
# Played on XBONE, finished 9/22. I didn't think they could get any more crazy than SRIV, but they came up with something. The traversal mechanics were a lot of fun, but overall the game felt like DLC and not it's own thing.
Game 59:
Fallout 3 - 24 hours
# Played on PC, finished 9/28. I didn't play any DLC because I'm planning on playing New Vegas and Fallout 4 and don't want to get too burned out.
Continued in Post 2...
Gave up on:
Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles - 5 hours
#Played on PS3. Got to the RE2 section and the game suddenly got 10x harder. I am playing with the DS3 and it's not helping any. I totally forgot that I have this game for Wii as well, so I might try it there later, but more likely I'm just going to skip this and Darkside Chronicles and move on to Revelations since I got both via PS+.
Professor Layton and the Curious Village - 7.25 hours
#Played on 3DS. A bit too casual for my tastes. I could have just forced my way through, but I'm in no danger of meeting my goal and it was getting very tedious.
Syberia II - 11.5 hours
# Played on PC. This one kind of came off the rails for me in the second to last chapter. The backtracking increased, and therefore did the walking/running animations, there were some annoying pixel hunts I missed and some more obscure puzzles. I liked the game up until that point, but then my patience wore a bit thin and I started looking up a bunch of hints. I kind of feel bad about considering this finished, so I'm putting it in the "gave up" column even though I saw the credits.
The Bridge - 30 minutes
# Played on MAC. I just can't get into these one-puzzle-at-a-time games. I've tried others like Stealth Bastard and I just don't feel the compulsion to move forward.
Deus Ex Invisible War - 11 hours
# Played on PC. Son of a...first I lost 5 hours of Ori to a bug, now I lose 11 hours of this game to a corrupt save. Well, I'm not playing it over, I'm moving on to Human Revolution. A pretty odd experience coming right off Deus Ex. Super tiny levels and a slimmed down progression system, but a surprisingly complex system of choice. Wish I could have finished it, but it mostly lived up to its reputation.
Apotheon - 5 hours
# Played on PS4. Game crashed and the most recent save was basically at the beginning of the game. Not interested in replaying all that right now.
Mega Man Maverick Hunter X - 30 minutes
#Played on PSVITA. Couldn't beat the first boss and didn't feel like taking the time to repeat it until I could.
