Full List
Impressions Part 2
1. Super Mario 3D World - 30+ Hours
Yeah, it *is* too easy until you get halfway through the game (or more), but the excellence in design can't be ignored. And when the challenge kicks in you end up with a legitimately great Mario game. As someone who "grew up" with Super Mario World instead of the SMB series I really loved all the throwbacks to that game (But where were the Reznors?!).
2. Mario Kart 8 - 25+ Hours
Was really, immediately impressed with the scale of the game. Even before the light turned green on my first race the game had won me. The sense of place and space in the world was something that had been lacking in recent MK games (not that I have played all of them) and 8 nails it. And of course the actually driving mechanics, physics, and level design are all Nintendo caliber. Multiplayer is great. DLC is great. It's great.
3. Hyrule Warriors - 22 Hours
Played this just enough to see the credits roll (basically). The game is pretty much exactly what I expected it to be, it just wore thin for me quicker than I thought it would. I know there's still an ocean of content there if I choose to go back, but for now, I'm good.
4. Bayonetta 2 - 17 Hours
Plays it a bit safer than Bayo1, especially with regards to the final boss, but I loved every minute I played of this. The style is still second to none.
5. Kairo - 3 Hours
Very interesting little puzzle/walkabout game. The game excels with its sparse, almost surreal design. Similar to Antichamber but without all the head fuckery.
6. Defense Grid 2 - 12 Hours
I can count the tower defense games I've *ever* played on one hand, and two of them are Defense Grid. I put 30 hours into the first game and still never managed to scrape the bottom of what it had to offer. I didn't get into the score attack aspect of the game at all. So I have no problem with the changes they made to scoring/resource management or streamlining some of the less useful towers. Putting a stream of aliens through "the gauntlet" as I called it was still as fun as ever.
7. Hotline Miami 2 - 21 Hours
Superior to the original in every way. I adore games that let you quickly restart after failing and this is no exception. Just a really great experience all around.
8. Stanley Parable - 1.5 Hours
I'd already played the mod, and the demo, so by the time I got to this it felt a little been there, done that. But I would still recommend it to anyone that doesn't know what to expect out of it yet.
9. Divinity: Original Sin - 140+ Hours (Yes, really)
I'm not sure why this seemingly took me twice as long as anyone else to beat, I guess it's because I'm mostly new to the genre. Anyway I'm really pleased with myself that I was able to see it through to the end, and that the game (mostly) managed to keep surprising me through the entire duration. And the final boss was *just* the right amount of hard to not be completely frustrating but also hard enough to give a really great sense of satisfaction when you defeat it and realize your journey has finally come to an end.
10. Super Smash Bros. WiiU - 30+ Hours
Yup, it's SSB. Melee will always be my favorite in my heart but I was really happy with what the developers put together here. Still, after the 4th iteration, it just sorta feels like another Smash Bros game and didn't keep my attention as long as I'd hoped. Beats the pants of Brawl at least and I'll actually return to it from time to time unlike that turd of a game.
11. Half-Life 2: Lost Coast - 30 Minutes
A bit of a cheat game, but I was feeling sort of burnt out with gaming in general after the gauntlet that was Divinity:OS, and this was the short and sweet adrenaline shot I needed. Not sure if it's just not *quite* as polished as the rest of the HL2 series or if the gameplay is truly starting to show it's age but I could see the forest for the trees, and not in a good way. Still a well done gameplay showcase however.
12. Half-Life: Opposing Force - 4 Hours
So I ended up going backwards to the (superior) HL1 gameplay. Didn't really want something as long as HL1 proper especially since I just played Black Mesa last year or so, and according to Steam I hadn't played this since they started tracking play time, which was 6 years ago if I remember correctly, so I figured I was about due. Holds up really well for the most part, and even though it's not canon I appreciated how Gearbox expanded on the different types of aliens that came through the portal after the resonance cascade. They also, thankfully, kept your time in Xen to an absolute minimum. The only thing missing was human vs human combat, but in the context of the story it makes sense. It was also interesting seeing a very basic Team Fortress motif present; along the way you'll come across other mercs you have to enlist to help you progress, like an engineer to fix a broken door keypad or a medic to revive a fallen soldier who will help you proceed. Pretty neat stuff considering the time period the game was made.
13. Grand Theft Auto V - 88+ Hours
Beat the campaign around 45 hours and the rest has been spent chasing 100% or goofing off online. Not quite sure how much longevity the game would have if I didn't have half a dozen friends to play with, but luckily I do, and heists and jobs and races and deathmatch etc etc is just *a lot* of fun.
14. Raincat - 30 Minutes
Cute little flash game in the style of Lemmings. Keep the cat from getting wet while navigating hazards and reaching the end of the level. A nice distraction.
15. Agar.io - 3 Hours
A web game that, surprisingly enough to me, has real time multiplayer. Can we just stop and recognize how awesome technology is that we can play a somewhat twitch-based game with 20 some odd other people IN OUR BROWSER? And not like Quake Live that requires a bundle of plugins to function correctly, but something that just loads and goes instantly. Really impressive to me. And it doesn't hurt that the gameplay is really addictive too.
16. South Park: The Stick of Truth - 13 Hours
As a South Park fan I pretty much loved this. The writing was top notch with plenty of in-jokes for the fans, and the RPG mechanics never got in the way of the game. I liked the character customization, especially in regards to the stamps or whatever that augmented your equipment and gave different passive abilities in combat. I would have preferred a little more depth in the combat, especially in regards to using fire/electric/gross out abilities as it seemed they could be completely ignored with little repercussion. Though previous games certainly set the bar low, this is easily the best South Park game and I'll happily play the sequel, as long as Ubisoft doesn't shit it up too much like they tend to do with their other franchises.
17. Wolfenstein: The New Order - 12 Hours
I haven't played any other Wolfenstein games so I don't know how this compares to those, but this game seemed to channel the spirit of old school FPS games rather well. Simple fast and fluid fun. Over the course of the game I found myself comparing it favorably to some of my favorite shooters: Metro, Dead Space, FEAR, Hard Reset.. They really nailed the basic mechanics of movement and aiming that just made the game FUN. Challenging without being uneven or unfairly difficult. Having to scavenge for health and armor breaks the game up nicely and brings a lot of tension that other shooters with regen health simply lack. That said, I feel like there could have been more/better set pieces or a wider variety of enemies and bosses because, although I beat it only a month ago, I'm struggling to remember large swaths of the game. More FPS games like this, please.
18. FRACT OSC - 9.5 Hours
I'm really at a loss for how to describe this game. Part walkabout, part puzzle game, part digital audio workstation. It was certainly a unique experience but I'm not sure it came together as a whole particularly well. I would have preferred a *little* more direction or guidance (I don't think there's a single word, text or otherwise, in the entire game), and some of the puzzles were a little obtuse, particularly the last puzzle which seemed to rely on either twiddling knobs randomly until a bar started increasing or retreading the entire game to physically write down the solutions to all the previous puzzles to enter the settings into the final DAW. I ended up turning to Youtube for the solution rather than going through that hassle of backtracking the entire game and made the whole finale rather underwhelming.
19. Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze - 9.5 Hours
This was a lot of fun. I enjoyed the challenge over other Nintendo platformers though there was one stage I felt was a little unfairly difficult. I didn't attempt to unlock or beat the bonus levels so maybe I'd feel differently if I had. I loved how the game used the Z-axis to go 'deeper' into some levels, it made it feel like I was in a real place rather than just playing a level on a flat plane on a video game. The sense of movement from DK was really excellent and gave a great sense of bounding through a jungle and at times was impressed to see how the levels were designed to encourage speeding through it if you knew the layout well enough, not unlike the better designed Sonic games. Two things that disappointed me though were the lack of animal buddies (No Enguarde is criminal) and the lack of variety in level settings. In the 6 or so worlds of the game, 5 are tropical themed and 1 was snow/ice themed which lead to a lot of the game feeling very samey, visually. A real missed opportunity there in my opinion as throwing in even a few more underwater levels or even one volcano level would have been a welcome change of pace, but overall I enjoyed my time with the game.
20. Shelter - 1.5 Hours
A unique game in which you play as a mother badger protecting her young cubs from the dangers of the world. As you progress through the game, various predators or obstacles can kill your cubs if you aren't careful enough and just like the real world, there's no getting them back. Mechanically and graphically simple (yet effective), the games focus is primarily evoking emotions and reactions from you based on the themes of loss and sacrifice (games as an art form, eat your heart out!). I admit at the games' end I couldn't help but reflect on the ways my own mother has sacrificed for my own well being and in that regard the game was a success. But it was a very sombre experience and certainly not for everyone.
21. Polarity - 1.5 Hours
A simple Portal-like. Beat everything in one sitting and while the puzzles weren't as clever as Portal's, they were never trivial to the point of banality. Considering it was NINETEEN UNITED STATES CENTS, I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the game.
22. Pixeljunk Shooter - 5 Hours
I adored the aesthetic and gameplay of Pixeljunk Eden, though it sort of overstayed it's welcome, so I was more than happy to give this a shot. The gameplay here was every bit as solid, and certainly more fun and straightforward compared to Eden's more challenging and free-flowing design. The aesthetic was more perfunctory and in service to the mechanics of the game, though it certainly didn't take away from the experience. While individual levels seemed overly long clocking in at 15-25 minutes, the game as a whole seemed rather short and by the end I was yearning for more content. Hopefully the sequel sees the light of day on PC.
23. Chain Chronicle - 20+ Hours
With no game timer, it's hard to say how many hours I've actually put into this. It's likely it might be double, or triple what I've listed. Maybe even more than that. The game is a bit of a tower-defense, Plants vs Zombies deal, but with moveable units. And being 'gacha' focused there is a bit of a Pokemon 'gotta catch em all' slant as well. For being an Android/iOS f2p game, it's rather impressive how easy it is to avoid spending even a single dollar on in-app purchases. With unique events and new content releasing at an almost weekly rate there is plenty to keep busy with. Though I've beaten the main story quest I'm still plugging away at this on a daily basis.
24. The Evil Within - 18 Hours
What a fucking disaster this game is. Back in September/October, before this and Alien Isolation came out I thought for sure this would be GOTY status and Alien was gonna be a hot mess. Boy, how wrong I was (Seriously, go play Alien Isolation that game is flippin amazing). I can admit I'm being a little harsh but from a gameplay perspective this is little more than a Resident Evil 4 retread with obvious Silent Hill aesthetic and story/creature inspirations. After getting through 4 chapters or so I sidelined this for 7 or 8 months because the beginning of the game has no redeeming qualities. I forced myself back to it and luckily the back 2/3 of the game evened out considerably and at times was even enjoyable. But the game never strives to be any more than an imitation and amalgamation of games already released and never brings anything new to the table or does anything particularly well. If it weren't for the text file I'm keeping for the purposes of this thread, I would be under the impression I still needed to beat it (Honestly, I opened the file to reference for this post and was *SHOCKED* to see TEW listed as beaten- and it was only 2 or 3 weeks ago). Also, I have no idea what the fuck was happening ever in the entire game.
25. Grow Home - 6.5 Hours
Certainly not the most innovative game or grandest in scope, but everything that's present here is perfectly executed. To me, this is a perfect game. Explore an island, grab some plants and ride them into the sky, discover new flora and fauna. It's simple but everything is fun and nothing is extraneous. I 100% completed the game in two sittings and recommend it to everyone.
26. Tropico 4 - 40 Hours
Finally I've found the game that let me break into the city building genre! I adored the Tropico 1 demo back in 1999 ("El Presidente your people are starving!" but that never really translated into being
good at the game. After something like two hours of tutorials I was ready to hit the ground running. I beat all 20 missions of the main campaign, and yes by the end it was a little repetitive but maintaining the balance of keeping your revenue in the black and keeping all the factions pleased while trying to grow your island be it through export or tourism was always entertaining, especially with the curve balls the missions would throw at you with regularity. From what I've read online, popular opinion seems to suggest this is the best Tropico which seems to line up with my experience of finally breaking through with this one in spite of owning Tropico 1-3 and never quite getting it. In time I'll probably come back and do the Modern Times campaign but after putting 40 hours into the game in two weeks, for now I've had my fill.
27. Corporate Lifestyle Simulator - 1.6 Hours
A nice little diversion that plays like a mashup of Hotline Miami and Zombies Ate My Neighbors. The first half is a bit too easy but the back half of the game provides some decent challenge without being frustrating making it the perfect game to kick back and have some fun with. The creators seem to be fully aware of this too as the writing is very tongue-in-cheek and in on the joke that it's a video game lambasting the soul sucking nature of corporate life.
28. Nidhogg - 1.5 Hours
I guess I expected a little more meat out of this. The single player campaign is easily beaten in 30 minutes or so with multiplayer left to pick up the slack. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing as I did have a good time playing a round robin with some friends over Mumble, but ultimately I'm sort of disappointed with how much the game rewards avoiding engagements entirely and just running to the next screen to reach the end of the level. Mechanically however, there's a lot to like and I was impressed with the easy to learn, difficult to master nature of the game.
29. Binding of Isaac Rebirth - 7.5 Hours
What an utter blessing it is to finally be able to play Binding of Isaac with a controller. As someone who uses custom keybinds in every PC game and gets hand cramps with standard WASD, I had a love/hate relationship with the original and it's lack of custom configs. So everything here is pretty much improved upon over the original, though is it just me or is it a bit easier to get to the end now? In the original I probably spent 8-10 hours just trying to reach Mom alone. Here I managed it in an hour and a half, and subsequently reached Mom's Heart on the very next run. There's still plenty of content to chew through with the Challenge runs which I'm enjoying a lot (finished 4 or so of those already) not to mention reaching the "real" end game with Satan and all that, so I'm far from done with the game but for the purposes of this thread, I've 'finished' it.
30. Dragon Ball Z Dokkan Battle - 10+ Hours
My second foray into this 'gacha' mobile game craze. At least this time I give a hoot about the characters and story. I like how the game encourages the use of different teams due to type strengths and weaknesses compared to other games where it's more like, "get the 5 best characters and use them all the time forever" so even though there isn't a "Pokedex" of sorts to keep track of which characters you've collected there's still incentive to expand and improve your party. And the generous stamina regen rate plus generally low stamina requirements for quests means I'm not worrying about maximizing my stamina usage and playing the minute it's filled up again, instead I'm free to play the game as I please without feeling like a slave to the game's systems like I did in Chain Chronicle. I've beaten the campaign on normal difficulty already, chipping away at it on hard, and I'm eager for more.
