1. Hohokum ; Conan.gif. Ebb and flow in this Technicolor world and discover its imaginative creations and meet its inhabitants. What I enjoy about this game is that it is entirely relaxing and somewhat surprising. The overall premise of the game is quite unclear, at first thought it honestly just seemed like some sort of snake venturing through colorful places for no peculiar reason, but I suppose that is what it essentially is on the surface. I suppose some people could say that this is one of those artsy, fartsy non game game.
The game has nearly no direction, no instruction on what you should be doing. It likes a non-straight forward puzzle, there are subtle cues as to what might indicate what you should do, but as for most games I play, I am quite oblivious to them for quite some time.Normally that would just irritate me for not knowing what to do but the games atmosphere is so relaxing. Whimsically flying through colorful locations combined with a great mellowing soundtrack relaxed me. I found myself just wandering through the game for hours on end not caring about the world around me and just flowing through the world of Hohokum, doing absolutely nothing and enjoying myself.
Its like Im a child and its a playground, no expectation, no instruction, its just discovering the world around me in its simplest form, with no knowledge of what is, or what will be. The people of the Hohokum will interact with you, not provoked or initiated, you respond to them, whether to ask you for your help, to reach a certain destination, or dance wildly in fear throwing spears at the mysterious snake kite that you are, running for dear life as soon as they feel threatened. Some inhabitants will ride on your back and soon youll have a whole group of people hitching on you dancing and grooving while you wiz and waz through the sky, hoping to reach their destination. Its a lovely relaxing, colorful world full of lively imaginations that react and respond to your presence.
Discovery is what this game is really about or can be interpreted to be. This loosely structured world introduces you to other colorful kites such as yourself, as your colors dance and flies together in unison against the black backdrop, living together in harmony, without a care in the world. And tragically you split apart, your kite friends disappear as soon as you meet them, scattered across the numerous colorful zones of Hohokum. You traverse these zones and help its inhabitants in addition to searching for your colorful kite friends. The journey you embark on is all at your own pace, going as fast or as slow as you want. Discover the secrets of these colorful landscapes, and unlock answers or progress further in your journey for aiding the needy.
No traditional objectives, no instruction, no structure, no failing, no direction, these barely have any presence in Hohokum. It's entirely different, colorful and relaxing. Experiment and journey through a wonderful world of Technicolor landscapes and its quirky inhabitants as you listen to the soothing soundtrack. Slither across the skies as a colorful snake, eye always open, always watching the world as you explore for there is always more to discover in this quirky, colorful world.
2. Awesomenauts Assemble ; Probably the only MOBA that Ill ever come back to again and again. Ive played it since it became free on PS+ on PS3 way back when. It was terribly unbalanced and just an eyesore compared to its current iteration. I didnt really like playing it back then either.
The basic premise of this game is that there are turrets on each side, blue and red side. And those turrets would protect the way to the respective cores of each team, destroy the enemy core and well, you win. It was a 2D platforming MOBA, there are different characters that have different abilities that have cooldowns, strengths and weaknesses to exploit just like any MOBA I guess, but less automated I suppose since there isnt a clear cut way to play the game.
I use to use Voltar the Omniscient all game and watch my drones do all the work, when you actually had to manually put the drones out yourself, I thought it was pretty cool to have a character just as a brain and have automated attacks by little hovering robots. Whenever I did play I would mostly play bots because I was too much of a coward to play online play. For a time I didnt play it, it got boring, and I didnt really like it anymore.
Then the PS4 version was announced. My boyfriend really liked playing the game and thought he would get back into it with the updated version, I figured why not. The game was overhauled immensely, I only played the console version at that point so I had no idea of the changes, but Jesus Christ it looked so much better than the ugly old PS3 version. New characters, a new map, jump pads were actually attached to things instead of putting them awkwardly onto the ground, and of course NEW characters.
I still used Voltar as my crutch, but I was a bit surprised to find out his shitty little healing pod was given this huge ass radius of effect, and it was actually useful compared to the little dinky thing it was in the ps3 version. For a while my nooby tactics worked, max the pod and watch opponents accept defeat due to the awesome might of Voltars tactical pod and this time I even played online. But at some point that stopped working, and wed lose. So onto other characters I went, from the poisonous Gnaw, the thieving Vinnie & Spike, and the ruffhousing Skolldir. I use to use clone leon and spam clones to attack the enemy turrets, and well it worked pretty well, an army of clones that couldnt be stopped, until we won. I learned to play the game, and got much better at it, well so I thought. Ronimo was actually updating the game as well, not as far off as the steam version, but like a few updates behind it. New characters, balance patches and of course costume DLC which albeit were pretty neat looking.
After a while the population of the PS4 version tapered off, and it wasnt very active, to this day it still isnt as active as it was at launch of the PS4 version, but I still play it occasionally. At some point my boyfriend and I enjoyed playing the game, but had to accept the ps4 version was dead, so we bought the steam version. And to this day I play the steam version almost daily. Obviously it is much more active. And it is honestly very different, I had to get used to playing it, I still occasionally feed more than I should, but nonetheless its good fun, unless its some sort of premade taunting endlessly and spamming /all chat saying youre garbage. And Ive learned many things about the game, to where I feel like a competent player, at least most of the time.
I also enjoy watching streams of the game, the game isnt as active as say DOTA or LoL, obviously, but it has its own little active community. From regular top player streamers like ToiletHumor, #toilethumorbestskoll, and edweiner to harrybutchers, there are other streamers but personally they arent as entertaining. Watching them play also helps me with the game, I learn and pick up some of the stuff they do, make better builds, what I should get first, and just think better in tight critical situations. And quite frankly watching toilethumor play skolldir just fucking destroying people while SOLO que is just amazing, like god damn he fucking rekts so many people over with just something so simple as his fists.
Ive grown to love this game, from its interesting cast of characters, from the shitty genji, which I really love to play as, to the better of the crop, *cough*nerf penny *cough*, their various imaginative costumes, their unique and eclectic abilities, right down to their amusing, witty and fun dialogues. As much as the shitty teammates pair, and the countless shit talking that spews in the chat, and what seems to be an unending wave of premades happen in the game, I enjoy it immensely.
3. BlazBlue Chrono Phantasma ;The Wheel of Fate is Turning. Rebel 1. ACTION. I miss the old announcer from vanilla Trigger, it grew on me. I havent played a BlazBlue since Continuum Shift. The BlazBlue series is probably the first fighting game series Ive played seriously. I remember grinding in the training room and repeatedly playing the tutorial back in 2009 (I think? whenever BBCT came out) spending hours just trying to learn combos and then playing online with some friends. I got destroyed so many times it was discouraging to keep playing the game after losing so much, winning was rare and I was just bad at it. But losing is good, I'll learn from my mistakes and just keep practicing.
I never did win very much, still I played the BB series til CS, it was a fun game, I enjoyed watching it, even the cool bluray that came with CT that had combos and stuff on it. The combos were cool and stylish. I liked one character in particular, Rachel Alucard. A thousand year old vampire girl that looks like nothing more than a 10? year old little girl, sounds like something typical out of an anime. She was pristine and diligent, an air of sophistication. She also used a cute pudgy little flying companion and a transformative cat combined with lightning to combat opponents. I thought she was pretty cool, so I played as her, the bluray that came with CT had really cool looking combos, so I practiced those. I wasn't very successful but I still liked the character.
After a while I stopped playing and didn't buy any of the expansions to the series until this version CP. I thought why not get back into a game I use to really like playing so I did. There were so many changes to the characters I did know, plus well all knew characters, it was like I was playing the game for the first time again, except I wasn't nearly as bad, and I knew how to do combos more efficiently so that was great. I tried different characters like Tager and Relius they were fun to play as, and I still played Rachel of course. The tutorials were great for learning the game over again, seriously Arc System Works makes some great tutorials for fighting games.
I played it for a good amount of time during its release window, had fun online just messing around with some friends, or even just watching the snow level background, and see how the snowballs are thrown by the background ensemble. While I dont really play this game all too serious as I could, its still pretty fun to just mess around with some friends and just mash 720 Cs with Tager and loop it with iron finger repeatedly, while they cant seem to break the grab at the right moment. Also EVO 2014, BBCP top 8 was great to watch, personally I really wanted the Azrael player to win, but fucking Lichi kept coming back, it was so fucking close too, great finals, great top 8, loved watching it. Glad a Rachel and a Tager got into top 8 as well, fuck you Litchi.
4. DriveClub ; #DRIVECLUB. ALWAYS BOLD, ALWAYS UPPERCASED. I have to admit, the only thing I was interested about this game was its soundtrack, well at first at least. I mean I dont know how fast I wanna go, HOW FAST DO I WANT TO GO? Sanic speed, maybe thats too fast, anyways
Boyfriend bought this game on sale for $40 @ Best Buy, personally I havent experienced any of the online problems so I cant attest to the unfortunate problems with connectivity.
I feel like I am Sonic when I play this game, it feels fast, but at times I just want to cruise, but I guess thats my fault for buying a racing game. But good god this game is gorgeous. Im pretty terrible at racing games but I like slowing down and take my good of time perusing the landscapes at my own pace. Its pretty much landscape porn for me, I boot up the game and spectators just watch in amazement to see how fantastic this game visually is. The rain droplets, everywhere, the snow pelting against the windshield, the hands of the driver gripping onto the steering wheel, the accompanying sound effects of pitter patter on the windshield, I usually dont care for realism, but this attention to detail is nothing short of impressive. Also free track dlc is wonderful, more landscape porn. Probably the only game Id want to be in some sort of heavy amount of absurd weather just to gawk at all that Mother Nature.
5. NAtURAL DOCtRINE- I usually HATE when someone describes a game using another game, e.g. The Dark Souls of insert genre-. As if a game can be accurately depicted using apparent truisms of one game such as Dark Souls to be associated as hardand can somehow apply it to a different game on the basis that their commonalities are the most significant qualities to mention. I can see how someone can use it to explain what a game is like, but Id rather just hear the reasoning behind it at that point. So when NISA did that to advertise this game, it made me a bit irked. I can get understand why they did though, Dark Souls can be a challenge, and it just so happens to be a popular hardcore game, association is good. Anyway I bought it, and it was indeed a hard game. I can see why it could be compared to Dark Souls in terms of difficulty, despite the game sometimes being cheap and unfair unlike its referenced comparison. You can die pretty easy from just positioning your troops/characters poorly, like really fast, those goblins will the little guns just fuck you up. In hindsight its a pretty bad idea to position anyone in the line of sight of like 4-5 goblins with guns. But the game certainly can be cheap at times. I remember going to the 2nd dungeon, it was a tutorial dungeon where well obviously you learn the game, but after that you play the dungeon as is. I had used a switch to open a secret passage, lo and behold there was a cell containing a creature named Troll, behind him was a treasure chest, so I figured, why not kill him and loot the chest. It was like impossible to kill him at this point in time, I only had 4 characters that had like the hp to withstand about 2 attacks from the big guy, and the perhaps the worst part is, its GAME OVER when even one character dies. So I left the troll be, but that really sucked, it just discouraged me from exploring hidden passageways in fear of ultra-destructive enemies lingering behind secret passageways. I didnt though since there was a checkpoint system and I could just start from there. Either way starting over kind of sucks, especially since the battles can be pretty long fighting against like 20 goblins, and theres even more behind a door or something. It reminded me of my first go at Demons Souls, dying a lot, and forced to try different tactics and measures to overcome the challenge at hand, just not as technically or timely skilled. More planning was required, outcomes had to be considered. What if this little shit could shoot me over this ridge? Do I take that chance? DO I TAKE THE CHANCE? Yeah. Sometimes I did take the chance only to immediately regret it, I restarted plenty of times. But I digress despite all my deaths and trials, I had fun with the game. It was a challenge, I had that weird sense of accomplishment most people say when they overcome some hard thing in dark souls. Generalizing, It was HARD, and I died a LOT, but when that fucker went down, I felt fucking relieved. Learning is fun, and the game certainly had a lot of learning involved, for a strategy RPG, its incredibly hard and somewhat rewarding.
The gameplay is like most SRPGs, other than the fact you can move in the squares that you place yourself in, it's not a set place you move to, you can position yourself further when moving to a zone. From those positions you can attack enemies, change your equipment or just stand guard. There's a special mechanic which I don't even remember the name of, in which if you act as a player, as in attack, your teammates can also attack on that character's turn. So it's like a team turn in a sense because not only can that one unit's turn be used for only that unit, but potentially your entire team can attack, like a team attack, but only using one unit's turn. Sounds powerful and allows for more strategic planning on your part, sounds easier to get rid of enemies too, right? Wrong. The enemy can also use this tactic. Each enemy can use this team turn mechanic which in turn makes the game all so more difficult you can get wiped on the first enemy turn if you don't plan right, especially if there just ranged characters all taking fire at your poor characters. It's a really interesting mechanic, can turn the tide in an instance, for you or the enemy. It's that much harder and cheaper because of that mechanic, even on the easiest setting, it's a death sentence if you don't plan carefully and methodically think of how to progress the game. Synergize effectively or die is basically what it boils down to.
Yeah, I get that "feeling" that most people get when they beat something difficult like in the souls series. It's a terribly difficult game, I'd be relieved too overcoming the numerous deaths and restarts against these cheeky fuckers, it's rewarding. There's also a multiplayer mode which is honestly half baked and I've only played it once, co-op and multiplayer in which you utilize cards instead of the story troops. Spoiler alert, it's also hard. This game is hard, difficult and insanely cheap, but I'd be lying to say I didn't enjoy this unique challenge, strategizing repeatedly the best way to take care of the vicious hordes of creatures that lie ahead.
6. Guilty Gear XRD Sign ; HEAVEN OR HELL, Let's Rock. One thing I can say about nearly every Arc System fighting game is that they have fantastic tutorials, perhaps the best tutorials I have ever completed in any fighting game. Never played a game in the GG series, but any series where a character (May I think, I never pay attention to names, I'm terrible at names)can use a dolphin to fight is more than reason enough for me to want to play it. Despite some of the animations being very, very similar to some characters in the BB series, the game outright plays very different, in my opinion. Quite frankly I still haven't grasped how to properly play the game even to this day. But I suppose more practice will remedy that just fine. The game is gorgeous as well, it's like a 3d like image in a 2d fighter, it's just amazing how they did that. I'm still pretty early into this game compared to BB but I'm greatly enjoying this game.
7. Banished ; I like building games like CIV, even if they take long meticulous amounts of planning, and time, well for me anyway. Playing God is fun, creating your own little village and ensuring they grow and strive to be the best village they can be is almost like an artificial sense of parental accomplishment. But good god, am I anal about a person dying in this game. Every It winter, "Someone has died" just kills me a little. I usually restart every time that happens. I'm pretty bad at these kinds of games for some reason, but I still enjoy them, it's fun making things that can grow into something bigger.
8. Samurai Warriors 4 ; Best musou this year, runs and looks great on ps4 as well. Hyper attacks change up the frantic square frenzy and different character switching implementation makes for great opportunities of different playstyles on one stage. It's fast and plays well, along with the RPG system musous have this one is a bit different from the standard fare of the Dynasty series combining weapon levels and gems and you can even make your own character and play as them in chronicle mode. I like musou games, despite them being mostly samey, they're good fun and SW4 is the best one I played this year. It's just too bad Koei just ships this game out with the online being not at all fully functional for some people.
9. The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth ; What a disgusting little game this is. I have to say this games aesthetic is just gross. Blood spewing out of moving toiletries, insects of all gross nature hovering around trying to murder you, severed baby heads floating around, ragged dead bodies (?), every grotesque inhabitant is an obstacle in which you must clear, or avoid. And theres poop, theres POOP EVERYWHERE.
The games premise is pretty simple, clear rooms you enter and dont die, clear dungeons until you reach mom and then defeat her. You can gain power ups and items that will help you along your journey to mom, all randomized I believe. And that's pretty much it aside from the various dungeons after you defeat mom for the first time, secret rooms you can encounter, various characters you can unlock, hordes of bosses you can slay, giant rooms you can trap yourself into, the game has a lot of replayability (not sure if that's a real word).
From all the different abilities you can gain in those unlockable rooms you can be a real pain to some of these gross looking monstrosities. From when you start out as your little tears take enemies down slowly but surely to the multiple dungeons later as a demonic looking figure that floats and casts giant laser beams across the room with little companions doing their best to help you destroy each room's disgusting inhabitants, you can become quite the monstrosity yourself, and wreak havoc amongst these gross creatures. It's a simple game with a huge amount of randomization and items allowing for a different type of playthrough each time, I like that about this game, it's different each time and you have little buddies helping you along the way, or you can become just ultimately become destructive and tear everything down in your way. It's gross looking too.
10. Plants Vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare ; First EA game Ive bought since SPORE, fucking spore. (I actually did enjoy playing spore, despite being disappointed by it at first.) In the time leading up to the release of this game, it almost seemed like a parody of popular games, I mean even in some of the promotional ads it had parodies for other games. It didn't take itself so seriously, I really liked that Popcap did that, it was just a game, and a delightful game at that.
It's a simple third person shooter, you're either a plant or a zombie and the objectives vary, different abilities for each class and your attacks/weapon of choice can be altered slightly depending on the costume you dawn. It's simple and fun. I'm not sure how to expand on this very well but it's fun, quirky and humorous. All I play is gardens and graveyards it's quite enjoyable just to tdm it for these long periods of times or just kill that one fucker that just camps all game contributing very little to the overall tide of the game.
I can't say I like everything about the game though, the progression via coins and some really, really specific challenges sucked, and the overall map variety, at least in Gardens and Graveyards is quite small at the moment. But hey it's free dlc, I'll just wait for it I guess. It's a simple humorous game, and it is quite fun.
