New archive post! This one will cover games 21-40.
Games 1-20
Game 21: The Last of Us Remastered
I'd played the original PS3 release with Left Behind already, so I'd done all this before. The up-res and frame rate improvements were much appreciated, though the downside is perhaps that some of the environmental geometry doesn't hold up now that it's being viewed in sharprer focus. I tried the played the main campaign on Hard, which provided the perfect challenge, but it was a little stressful, so I put it back to Normal for Left Behind. Special mention goes to the multiplayer, which is surprisingly brilliant (never tried it on PS3). When the Remastered version came out, I started by dipping my toes in that, and ended up not going back to the SP until this week. One of the best, most well-rounded games of the last decade.
If you liked Telltale's The Walking Dead or Uncharted, you'll like this
Game 22: Rayman Legends
When Rayman Origins came out, I thought it was pretty cool. Rayman Legends being announced as a Wii U exclusive was actually one of the things to sway me in to buying the console at launch. Of course, things didn't turn out that way, and I sort of forgot about it until it came through my door on Saturday from my rental list. I wasn't really in the mood to start something else from scratch with so many "in progress" games in my pile, but curiosity got the better of me and I popped the disc in. I couldn't put it down after that. This game, guys. Holy shit. So gorgeous, with amazing character and level design and near-endless variety. I haven't seen a game this well made in years, and with a seriously generous amount of content. Now, I don't doubt this is mostly due to the lengthy post-production period Ubisoft forced upon Ancel's team, but given their recent output, maybe this is the answer? Anyway, I loved this. Definitely the best game on Wii U and
maybe the best platformer I've ever played.
If you like Super Mario World, or Rayman Origins you'll like this
Game 23: Last Window: The Secret of Cape West
I remember Hotel Dusk as a flawed experience. It was so fresh that it was really enjoyable for the first few chapters, but when the novelty wore off the game just became a slog, then a chore. And by the end, I kind of questioned whether I'd enjoyed it at all. It's been ages since I played it, so imagine my surprise when I discover that there was a sequel I had no idea about. And sure enough, the first few chapters I'm in love, and by the end I'm wondering why the hell I even bothered. Now, the storytelling is among the most mature in any game, but the story itself is just boring garbage. By about chapter 8 I was thinking that if this were a film it wouldn't have lasted even 2 hours without cutting a single bit of the experience. Kyle Hyde is an asshole, and his neighbors seem oblivious. The puzzles are contrived bollocks and the "gotcha" game overs are just terrible. What was I thinking.
If you liked Hotel Dusk, you'll like this
Game 24: Mortal Kombat X
Truth be told, I wasn't terribly excited to play this. I loved MK9 to bits, but when this was announced I thought that a flashier version of the same thing wasn't necessary, so I tuned out completely from all the pre-release coverage. I saw it picked up some good scores, and saw it available on PC for less that £20, so I thought, "why not?". Fuck. ME. I had severely underestimated how good this would be. The story was a blast of nonsensical comic-book fun and I wasn't expecting so many new characters, let alone for almost all of them to be
great. Cassie Cage has probably shot straight to being my favourite of the whole damn series. Sure, it doesn't have the depth and longevity of something like Street Fighter in multiplayer, but I'll be damned if this isn't the greatest single-player fighting game of all time.
If you liked MK9 or any superhero movie, you'll like this.
Game 25: Blackrock Mountain: A Hearthstone Adventure
First time back playing Hearthstone regularly in a couple of months. You can't fault that Blizzard polish, yet the price still stings a little. But it's offset by the rest of the game being so damn good and free that there's no real cause for complaint. Naxxramas had probably a greater effect on the meta with its cards, but there was still some cool additions in this. If anything, BRM got me to take a closer look at the G&G additions because, unlike with Naxxramas, my go-to deck couldn't cut it all the time. I ended up building a Paladin Mech deck that I've been taking to ranked matches with moderate success. This is from someone who only ever played Hunter. There were a lot of fun twists on the formula throughout the campaign (the "everything costs 1" match being a highlight), but the difficulty was a little uneven. Everything up to the end was pretty easy so long as you didn't bring in the wrong deck, but that 3 stage final boss with the wipe before the final form just felt straight-up unfair. Overall, though, it was a fun little diversion from Ranked and Arena and I'm eager to get back to tweaking my decks to leverage the new cards.
If you like Curse of Naxxramas, you'll like this
Game 26: Broken Age Act 2
This was not how I expected them to follow up Act 1. Essentially a retread of the same environments of the first act, but from the other character's perspective, the focus here was more on throwing puzzles at you in an environment full of familiar faces. I liked seeing all the cast again, because they were all great, but the increased focus on puzzling seemed a little reactionary to the criticisms that the first half was too easy. And when I have to walk the whole way back to the beach from Meriloft because I didn't have the right knot diagram with me, I was experiencing two emotions the first act never evoked: frustration and anger. Also, while the first act could be done basically one character at a time, this required you to keep their progress in sync at certain checkpoints, with no indication that you should switch over and get the other person caught up. All the stuff it did great in the first act, it continued to do great here. The dialogue and characterisation are all fantastic and it looks great. It just has some ugly little additions (plus one adorable one in the safety hexa-gal). It's still a sweet game, and the little closure sketches in the credits left me smiling and content, after all the frustrations that came before.
If you like Grim Fandango, you'll like this
Game 27: Ori and the Blind Forest
This was one gorgeous, fun game. The watercolour visuals and twee setup mask what is actually a difficult and often brutal game. The checkpointing system is similar to that seen in They Bleed Pixels, which I thought was great, but having to manually trigger it with a button press rather than simply standing still meant you get the lesson to do it all the time beaten into you by long, repeated sections. The ability levelling system was a nice addition to the regular metroidvania template, and because upgrades become few and far between in the second half, much time was spent contemplating which would help me *more* from the three choices I had. Unfortunately, though, there were some things that let the experience down. No teleport or quick-travel was a glaring omission, and the checkpointing system should really have restored health when you died. On more than one occasion, I was stuck in a dangerous area because of an ill-thought-out checkpoint that I had no way to undo. The framerate dips when things got hectic tarnished the otherwise impeccable presentation, and every single escape sequence ruined the pace when it should have boosted it. It doesn't control as well as something like Guacamelee, but if you've got an Xbox One or a decent PC, you seriously must play this game.
If you like Guacamelee, you'll like this
Game 28: Bloodborne
This is actually the first "Souls" game I've ever beaten, so I guess it's the one I enjoyed the most. The story was a little incomprehensible. I got some of the broad strokes and finished with the true ending, but there wasn't much resolution, and I didn't actually understand what had actually happened until I read the trophy description. I reckon that, throughout the game, I probably called for help for about half of the bosses. Mostly the earlier ones, after the Lecture Building's farm spot got seriously exploited and I got a little overlevelled. It took me 40 hours and it was all memorable, so there's not a lot I can do in a mini-review to pick highlights. A wonderful, Lovecraftian fever-dream that I'm unlikely to ever forget. Loved it.
(Special mention goes to the online community, who are mostly great. I was invaded a few times in Mensis, and most of them wouldn't engage until I bowed to greet them and begin the duel. I only got to the final shortcut because they were good enough to sit back while I worked my way to it. I almost let him win as thanks.
Almost)
If you like Dark Souls, you'll like this
Game 29: Wolfenstein: The New Order
Started this from the start at the weekend because I got real tempted to pick up the Old Blood, but I couldn't do it without beating this first. I bumped it down to the second-lowest difficulty so I could breeze through it without hitting any hurdles and that's pretty much exactly what I did. I don't know if it would work for every game, but the act of Nazi-killing with some crazy weapons is something that doesn't need to even be challenging to be a blast. I took the Wyatt timeline because I felt I owed him more than I owed Fergus (he saved BJ from that dog when he tossed the grenade, Fergus just asked him to do shit over and over). I must confess, though, I spent a lot of the game anticipating a twist that never came, because of the dead-eyed characters. Everything looked just a little off, so I was expecting it all to have been a dream or some shit. Anyway, great game. Stupid, fun story. Dual. Wielding. Auto. Shotguns.
If you like Bioshock, you'll like this
Game 30: The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings
I'd owned this for ages but swore I wouldn't start it until I finished the original Witcher. The glowing reviews for Wild Hunt caused me to reassess that and I decided earlier in the week that the first game was a lost cause, but that I'd definitely get through this before I bought the new one. So this was a bit of a rushed playthrough. I did little of the sidequesting, and the tutorial arena told me I should be playing on Easy, so I didn't argue (though, it was a little ridiculous during some of the key fights that I'd absolutely whup someone's ass then cut to cutscene where Geralt is struggling). I went down the Iorveth path and have no regrets about any of the decisions throughout the game. It was a fantastic experience, with some of the most impressive world-building I've ever seen. The whole place feels
alive, and the plot was packed full of enough double-crosses that it never lost its intrigue. The last chapter felt like the weakest, though. Almost as if it was rushed itself. I think most of the additions in the Enhanced Edition were here, but because I didn't seek out sidequests, I missed them and can see why they felt more content was needed. It thought it was a bit of a shame that you could basically ignore traps, bombs and signs, though that's probably down to it being on Easy. I'll bump it up for the Wild Hunt, for which my hype is now at fever pitch. Can't wait to pick up this story.
If you like Dragon Age or Game of Thrones, you'll like this
Game 31: Fez
Strange one, this. While it looks and sounds great, and it doesn't really do anything
wrong, I can't say I had a lot of fun with it. I finished it with 28 gold cubes and 4 anti-cubes and I felt that, for a puzzle-platformer, there was very little puzzling or platforming involved. While the "no death" mechanic felt too lenient by putting you right at the platform you fell off of, I certainly would have thought restarting the area would have been too punishing due to Gomez's slow movement. Working out what to do to reach the various cubes and cube bits was rarely anything other than, "rotate to this perspective", and I couldn't help but feel the game was confidently expecting me to be more impressed with the perspective mechanic than I actually was. However, I do appreciate that I only skimmed the surface. I only got half of the available cubes by nearly exhausting what I could find, and if you have the time to sit and decipher a new alphabet or whatever I'm sure there's loads of stuff to solve, but I simply couldn't be bothered doing all that.
If you like Crush or Echochrome, you'll like this
Game 32: Batman: Arkham Origins
In preparation for Arkham Knight, I set my other games I had on the go to one side and worked my way through this. I had a lot of fun with it, and the combat was as great as ever. The collectible stuff, I largely ignored. I got all the stuff in the first area at the start of the game, but after that I just couldn't be bothered. I'm glad, though, because I didn't want to burn out on it before AK. The story was garbage and Bruce Wayne is an asshole. I actually wanted Batman to get the shit kicked out of him in the final acts, so good job on that, Splash Damage. I'm someone who preferred Asylum to City, and this wasn't as good as the latter, so it's the worst of last gen's Batman games, as most people would tell you. However, being the worst Batman game doesn't make it a bad game. It was actually very good, it's just in unflattering company.
If you like Darksiders, you'll like this
Game 33: Her Story
Honestly, I'm not sure how to even talk about it without spoiling it all. I'll say it was a novel experience. And thoroughly unenjoyable. I guess I did kind of enjoy it on a meta level where it was interested in seeing how a story could be told like this, but I gave up when the credits rolled. I don't care about this story, nor do I care for the purposeful obfuscations along the way, so I just couldn't be bothered to hunt down the missing clips. It's hard to recommend it as an enjoyable way to spend an evening, but you should probably try it for yourself.
If you like Gone Home, you might like this
Game 34: STEINS;GATE
A textbook case of a slow-burner. When I started this, I wasn't really feeling it. The main character was totally unrelatable, and it was much too embroidered in anime tropes and otaku culture to suit me. When Mayuri, Faris or Lukako were speaking, or it indulged in "fanservice", I'd damn-near cringe to death. I guess it says something about the quality of the story, however, that it kept me from putting the thing down. Because it was magnificent. Half of the endings were just weak game-over screens, but any time you made it to chapter 10 it was gold. The time-travel experiments and voyage of discovery really reminded me of the movie Primer, and I really appreciated how it weaved real life stuff in there to help with the plausibility. What I didn't appreciate, though, was the moments where the player character was either violent against or contemplating sexual violence against some of the female characters. Left a sour taste in my mouth, that the sweetness of the true ending couldn't quite make me forget.
If you like Zero Escape, you'll like this
Game 35: Journey
I'd played through this on PS3, but only once, so it was interesting to take the trip through it again on PS4. The funny thing is, there were main narrative beats I could remember from the first playthrough 3 years ago, and I assumed there were missing bits I couldn't recall. But it turns out I remembered pretty much the entire thing, so it was shorter than I was expecting. That being said, I found it massively more affecting this time around. Journey is a game about life, love and loss. It's about personal growth and friendship. It says so much without uttering a word, and it does so with such perfect weight that it doesn't even feel like it's
doing anything. I'd played this before. Hell, I could even remember the entire thing. But since the credits rolled yesterday, I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. Flawless.
If you like Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, you'll like this
Game 36: Grand Theft Auto Online
I remember I played GTAIV Online once, got killed 10 times from 1000 yards away in the space of a minute, then swore off it completely. I didn't touch it when I got GTAV on PS3, and I didn't really think it was all that popular, but we had an intern in with us at work that wouldn't stop talking about it, so I swore I'd give it a shot with the PS4 release. That also didn't happen, but when the PC release came around and had the heists available, I finally gave it a go. The build-up to level 12 gave me a taste of the other GTA Online activities, but the only one that seemed any good was the racing. Everything else was only fun in the way that idly playing cards while you chat to your friends is - it's just kind of there as a way to pass the time. The races, though, were a lot of fun and had impressively well thought-out courses, for something built on the existing city locations. When I got on to the meat of the game, the much-hyped heists, my initial optimism after the first mission didn't take too long to turn to disappointment. The writing was a load of shite, and the concepts for the heists were often much better than the execution. And given there was only 5 of the things, that stupid fourth mission and anticlimactic final one were showing some creativity issues.
But the biggest issue of all I had was that I was in a group of 3 and matchmaking a fourth in was torturous. Then when they showed up, the stingy life pool meant they'd often quit out when we got wiped. Which meant another 25min+ wait for someone to do the same. Especially annoying on the missions where you really have to question if one player on their own couldn't have cleared it. I would say "thank god I didn't have to wait all that time for these disappointing heists", but with those matchmaking times, it feels like I did.
If like Grand Theft Auto and have a full group of 4, or alternatively like watching paint dry, you might like this
Game 37: Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes
I'd played through the Ground Zeroes mission of this on PS4 already, but with the imminent release of The Phantom Pain, I decided to give this a run through on PC. This time, I cleared all the main mission and all the side ops (but not the extra ops). The gameplay is still as impressive as when it released. The enemy patrols and AI routines are on another level any other entry in the series, and to go for a full-stealth approach is much more difficult. It's pretty daunting, actually. The side ops are also as much fun as the main mission. That action-packed agent extract was a great way to mix things up and the stealth-only assassination was an inspired challenge. It's pretty amazing how densely designed the base is, and how they managed to keep it feeling fresh with each mission. I even started warming to Keifer by the end. My hype levels for TPP are through the roof now.
If you liked Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, you'll like this
Game 38: Everybody's Gone to the Rapture
It took me two attempts to get through Dear Esther. The first time, I was expecting something else and was immediately turned off. The second time, I loved it. Everybody's Gone to the Rapture is an improvement in every regard, and due to having my expectations in check, I enjoyed it all the better. A part of the reason this resonated so much is that I've been to places very similar to the setting in this. It is an utterly accurate representation of a little village in the English countryside. The layout and scale, and the much-criticized (yet accurate) walking speed, all go a really long way to giving it a real sense of place. It no longer felt like I was running around an environment admiring the graphics, but that I was actually walking around this village, working out who lived here once and what happened. The stories themselves were great and the characters felt like they had real personalities (helped out by the excellent voice acting), but I found myself more interested in the day-to-day lives being affected by the supernatural rather than intrigued as to the nature of the thing that caused everyone to disappear. In my mind, all the sci-fi stuff was simply a means for The Chinese Room to tell the story in a deserted location, and to put an extra bit of stress and impending doom on these characters. Simply put, it's about the people who lived there, not what happened to them. And I got really choked up on more than one occasion, so I certainly felt something. It's not for everybody, granted. Loads of people will hate it through unmeasured expectations, or it not resonating with them. But it got me, and I thought it was fucking brilliant.
If you like Dear Esther, you'll like this
Game 39: Rocket League
So, I bought Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars for PS3 when it came out, but very few people on my friends list played it, and a lot of them were simply too turned off by that name to give it a go. So as a result, I didn't play much of it myself. Putting this on Plus was a damn masterstroke. It doesn't do much on the surface (it's just cars playing football), but the finely tuned physics and controls give it such an incredibly high skill-ceiling that it immediately feels like an actual
sport. I've played it almost every single day since it came out over a month ago, and I feel like I'm improving all the time. Some of the shit I can do in this game now I couldn't have dreamed of doing on day 1, and that's what makes it so great. You have the freedom to express yourself with ridiculous aerials and stunts that, maybe you only nail it one time in 5, but when you do, it's the sweetest feeling in the world. I may have finished Rocket League (as in, the Platinum Trophy unlocked for me last night) but I don't think I'll ever truly be finished
with it. I think this is the greatest multiplayer game I've ever played. Believe the hype.
If you like Haxball, you'll like this
Continued Here