At the start of this year I made 2 resolutions. Those resolutions were: Stop buying so many video games and Finish at least 100 games by the end of the year. Let's sweep that first one under the rug, because I still haven't learned how to spend my money wisely, and focus on the second. 100 games. That's a lot of games.
I was inspired by fellow duder @slag's attempt at doing the same last year as well as what appeared to be a worrisome trend of me buying a ton of games and then proceeding to not play them. I figured that since I have way more free time than I should at this point in my life that I could probably get it done.
It's the start of July and with 6 months, or 181 days, behind us I've currently finished 43 games. Most of which I've never played before but there are a couple of games that I've played, and in some cases finished, at least once before. The point of this thing isn't really to just finish 100 games I've played before but to experience some new stuff, which I've been pretty good about doing so far. In the event that I do end up replaying something, I'll only include it as part of the 100 if I finish it on a harder difficulty or 100% it.
Speaking of which, my general rules for what counts as "finishing a game" are: finish the story mode or finish all the levels. Basically anything that'll cause the credits to roll counts as finishing a game.
I've been keeping track of what games I've been finishing via this list on giantbomb.com, this blog post will pretty much be some expanded thoughts of the games I've played so far but sometimes I won't have anything else to say about a game other than "Yo it's pretty good". So if you don't feel like reading all the stuff I've written here then maybe you should just give that list a little look-over instead.
With all of that out of the way, let me tell you a thing or two about the 40-odd games I've played in the past six months!
January
This was my game of the year for 2014 and I've played this game about... 5 times since 2015 started.
I'm not gonna say much else about this game because I've said so much already but you should totally watch this interview I did with the developer for GBCER5 (Giant Bomb Community Endurance Run, in case you didn't know). You should also get used to seeing that initialism because you're going to see it a few more time throughout this thing.
I'm not too familiar with the other entries of the Devil May Cry series. Despite owning them all I can't really say I've actually played any of them.
I did find DmC to be pretty enjoyable though. I totally wouldn't mind if there was a sequel to this, especially if they manage to do more stuff similar to the nightclub level.
I'm sure everyone told you how awesome Shovel Knight was last year, well I'm here to also tell you that it's pretty good.
The era that it draws it's inspiration from is definitely before my time (the Nintendo console I look back on fondly is the Gamecube) but as someone who's definitely played a MegaMan game before I can tell you that yes, those games are kind of similar to Shovel Knight.
If you've felt like games don't let you move fast enough nowadays, then you should probably check out that Rise of the Triad remake. After you do that you should definitely check out Fotonica because man this game let's you get real fast!
Once you get the hang of timing your jumps correctly and you get some good speed going this game is an absolute blast. It's also extremely soul-crushing when you mess up a jump by a fraction of a second and end up smashing your head onto the next platform and fall into the abyss.
But yeah, real fun once you get the hang of things.
I'll be honest, I don't remember much about this game. I do remember having a good time with it but I'm drawing a blank when it comes to the specifics.
I'm sure you've heard already but this game's pretty good. I'm looking forward to playing Legends even if it is more Origins, I gotta get my didgeridoo fix somehow.
Aces Wild: Manic Brawling Action!
Aces Wild is a brawler where most of the action takes place in mid-air because most of the enemies are there and you can pretty much fly in this game. Well, you're actually just chaining dashes, dodges and jumps into your combos so you can move about the screen more efficiently. It's key to do so because there tend to be a lot of enemies on the screen who also happen to shoot projectiles at you much like a bullet hell game.
It's also worth noting that you can cancel any move into any other move in Aces Wild. So once you figure out how to time your dodges correctly you can basically never get hit as you're gliding across the screen, dodging bullets and KO-ing enemies which then ricochet into other enemies provided you hit them hard enough.
So yeah, this game is pretty wild. I recommend you play it BUT if you do, you should definitely play as not-Terry Bogard because he wields a sword with some ridiculous reach on it.
//N.P.P.D. RUSH//- The milk of Ultraviolet
So, the thing about N.P.P.D. RUSH is that you can beat it in under 5 minutes. Which I've done about 20+ times because I got really into speedrunning this for a bit.
The game is a twin stick shooter with a crazy premise (you're a limbless cop piloting a super-bike rescuing drug junkies) that reminds me of the kind of stories that you'd see in early 80's arcade games. There's also a shop where you can buy a better gun, add more time to your timer and more health. Oh, and you can sell your organs (which causes you to take more damage periodically) for a bunch of money.
It's got a certain charm to it, it feels kind of dated but in a good way. I think it's a neat little thing.
I've been keeping my eye on this one since it was announced because I loved Remember Me and oh man I really like that game I hope if I buy all of DONTNOD's games they'll somehow be able to get a sequel greenlit C'MON WHAT'S A PERSON GOTTA DO TO TURN THEIR DREAM INTO A REALITY.
As it turns out, Life is Strange is pretty good, the atmosphere has a certain sense of comfiness to it that I don't think I've seen in a game before.
I've only played the first episode but if the remaining episodes get released on time then the first season should be completed by the end of the year. I'll probably get around to playing them then.
FEBRUARY
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
I had no real knowledge of "Metal Gear" before playing this (I still don't) but if they're all as over-the-top like this then maybe I've got a series to get into. I mean, I do own 4 other Metal Gear games I could play and if they all allow me to do absurd things like fight a US president in a mariachi outfit then I'm all in.
Oh, and I should also mention that I did play this twice this year. Once for fun and again for GBCER5.
I always knew Strider as the ninja from MvC2 with the robot panther but after playing this remake (reboot?) he will always be known as the ninja from MvC2 with the robot EAGLE.
Seriously, that eagle was a life saver during boss fights.
Much like Mirror's Edge, Zeno Clash also features fun first-person combat. It also features guns but unlike Mirror's Edge, the guns are good in this game. TOO GOOD.
So good, in fact, that you're never given a reason not to use them instead of the melee which, I feel, is the focal point of the combat. You're actually kind of forced to use them because the enemies will pick up guns and shoot you, which gets real annoying when you're fighting big groups of guys.
I've heard the sequel does the melee combat a bit better, which is good, and has an even crazier story, which is also pretty good.
Hey guys, I'm a Sonic fan. Sonic Adventure 2 is my favorite Sonic game and I thought Sonic Generations was ok.
If you've got a hankering to play a game that wishes to recreate the Blue Blur's glory days then this is the game for you! I'm even gonna take it a bit further. if you've enjoyed ANY game that's been on a Sega console then Freedom Planet is for you!
Gunstar Heroes? Ristar? Dynamite Headdy? Cool Spot? Freedom Planet is SORT OF like all of those games AND it's good!
MARCH
Everywhere I've looked where someone was expressing an opinion on Hotline Miami 2 I saw either lukewarm acceptance or severe disappointment. I feel like I'm in the minority of people who like HM2 and think it's better than the first.
I suppose I only think so because the soundtrack is so good this time around and the story is presented in a way that I could understand it, if that was something I was interested in.
Another thing that I really appreciated is that it certainly feels like the levels were specifically designed to be played with the song that plays during said level. Either that or they did a really good job picking out the songs used for the game. It lead to several moments while I was playing where even though I was continuously failing and retrying a level, the extremely loud and pulsating music sort of kept me in an elevated state. I think it also helps that you only hear each song once in HM2 as opposed to hearing the same (good) songs multiple times over the course of the original.
Maybe my memory is muddled and the original is obviously superior and I just forgot, but as of right now Hotline 2 IS MY JAM.
Not much I'd care to say about Volgarr as it's a pretty straightforward game. I will say that I might have had a bit of an advantage having seen the Breaking Brad of this game so I've already seen what this game was going to throw at me.
90's FPS's are a definite sore spot in my gaming repertoire, so I thought I'd try and fix that with good old Duke. The Megaton edition on Steam is a great version to play if you've never played a shooter of the era or if you're coming back to it as there are a ton of options.
You can enable vertical mouse look if you want and at some point I'm pretty sure I was playing with my 360 controller at some point. Game still holds up too, which is nice.
APRIL
I had planned on playing through this game at least twice before I felt comfortable saying anything about how I felt about it. Unfortunately, I've only finished it once so I can't really say how good Dyscourse is when it comes to how varied one's experience might be.
I will say that I got my copy of this game from a box of Settlers of Catan and that was pretty rad.
If you didn't know, Uriel's Chasm is considered the worst game on Steam according to user reviews. The game isn't even that bad, people on the internet just tend to be a bit hyperbolic.
It's not a great game, but it's hardly the worst. If you would like to hear some more of my totally unbiased opinions on this game then you should watch this interview I did with the developer for GBCER5!
The first game on this list that I've put hear because I replayed it this year for GBCER5. I really, really like Remember Me. It does a lot of pretty cool things, some of which it does pretty well and some things it does not so well.
I'd like to see some of the mechanics expanded upon in perhaps a sequel or someone could just steal them and make them a bit better. That'd be pretty cool too.
If there's one developer I look to when I want a game with a ridiculous premise, it's Grasshopper Manufacture. Suda51's special brand of weirdness is right up my alley and KiD is up there when it comes some his studios best work.
The drawback, however, is that most of the time the average person would be better off simply watching the game's story unfold than play it themselves. I don't mind but there are definitely people out there who do.
The gameplay isn't terrible, but it doesn't do much to try and switch it up a bit. So if you're willing to play through it you'll probably get your money's worth. There's one part specifically that once I saw it I literally couldn't believe it was happening. I'm talking "put the controller down and go take a walk" kind of bewilderment.
Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes
My first real foray into the Metal Gear series came in the form of Ground Zeroes, the prelude to The Phantom Pain. I'm unsure where hardcore Metal Gear fans (Gearheads, I think they're called) rate Ground Zeroes among the other entries but I sure thought it was pretty swell for what it is.
If The Phantom Pain really is just bigger Ground Zeroes then I'm all aboard the hype train.
Maybe Nuclear Throne gets placed on this list on a technicality because a) it's still in Early Access and b) you can't really beat this game.
You see, much like real life, in Nuclear Throne death is the only way out. I count it as finished because I have looped (finished every level and reset the game) multiple times which is about as close as one gets to completing Nuclear Throne.
Another Suda game! If you've read this far then you already know how I feel about this game. I'm going to spoil it for you, I like it a lot and it's a pretty good game.
I think I've started playing, stopped playing and restarted Borderlands 3 or 4 times before I decided to not do that ever again and finish this game. I'd say this might be the only game on this list that I'm not totally positive about. The loot aspect of the game, as I've come to learn, is basically pointless at higher levels.
There's essentially a core group of guns that are essential for your character if you want to do anything post-game. It's kind of antithetical to the whole "we've got a bazillion guns!" marketing thing they boasted. I suppose that's not necessarily the fault of the developer's that the community "figured it out" so I won't blame them for that.
I will blame them for the writing and characters though but in the same breath I will also praise them for the Tiny Tina DLC, which is really good.
All that being said, I'm probably going to finish the rest of the DLC stuff I bought for this game. Why? Well, sometimes people just want to do something to take their minds off of something else and Borderlands fills that hole for me.
I ain't got nothing to say about Peggle.
MAY
A fantastic game, not much else I can really add to the conversation. Although...
If you were to ask me which Supergiant Games game I enjoyed the most my answer would be Transistor.
Both are top-notch games but Transistor's setting and atmosphere are what make is stand out for me.
Axiom Verge is really cool.
This classic match 3/time killer has a quest mode. It's not that good.
The campaign isn't the mode you should be buying and playing this game for. It is a necessary evil that must be carried out if you want to unlock any perks and weapons for the survival mode. It's serviceable but nothing to write home about (the campaign, not the game).
I'm kinda torn on Wizorb. On one hand, it's Breakout with magic so you can just throw fireballs at bricks until you win. On the other hand, you're still playing Breakout so you're inevitably going to end up in a situation where the ball will literally cover every part of the screen except the area where THAT ONE BRICK is hiding.
Luckily the game has a system built-in to give you mana if you're stuck doing the Devil's Dance but by the time it kicks in I'm willing to bet that your block breaking groove has already run out.
JUNE
Ah, Brad Muir's Trenched! I mean, Iron Brigade! I've been entertaining the idea that if there should ever be a sequel to this it should be about planes with arms. Imagine a regular dog fighting game but you can also just punch your enemies if you got close enough. You know what? Might as well go full Road Rash and give those planes chains. Now that'd be a video game.
Oh, and for what it's worth I do think this is Double Fine's best game.
I wasn't really sure what I was expecting when I started playing this but I really enjoyed my time with it by the end of the game. The swordplay is a lot of fun and some of the later guns are equally as fun especially when you upgrade.
I also found the story of demon familial drama that's presented in the motion comic sequences to be really cool. I'm not too keen on Lo Wang asking me if I wanted some wang though.
Other than that, it's a very solid game. I hope that sequel they're making is alright.
Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit
Hell Yeah! is a charming game with a couple of flaws. The WarioWare-esque micro games you play when you defeat the main enemies are cool when you first see them but they do repeat pretty often so that initial wow-factor does wear off.
There's also an underutilized mechanic where you can make your defeated enemies work for you and get you bonuses. You do have to access it by completely leaving the main game and selecting a different menu option AND it takes quite a while for you to actually get anything from it. I only managed to get one bonus from it over the course of the game despite checking on it every 30 minutes. So yeah, it's not without it's issues but it's still pretty good.
You probably knew this already, but Doom still holds up.
The game starts with moving forward and back bound to moving the mouse in the respective directions which is a really weird control scheme! I refuse to believe that anyone's ever decided to play Doom with that enabled and also had a good time playing it.
I guess the 90's were just a different time...
I've played so, so much of this game but apparently I've never actually finished it up until recently. I was just casually playing it and I ended up unlocking the final remix (which I had never seen before) and finished the game?
Every single Rhythm Heaven game is great but this one is without a doubt my favorite.
After playing through the nonchalant absurdity that is D4, I can confidently say that it's one of my favorite games that I've played this year. It plays well using a mouse considering it was meant to be played with a Kinect. There were even a couple of times during when I wished I had one just to see what kind of weird gestures the game would have me do.
It's also really on point with the character interactions. It's the right mix of nonsense (which nobody ever seems to acknowledge) and idle chit-chat.
If a game wants you to die and retry as many times as possible every death should be the fault of the player and not the game. 1001 Spikes is like that for the most part with the exception of two levels where I ended up dying 300+ times compared to the 10-40 times I died on most of the levels.
When I did end up finishing those levels it felt like I got lucky instead of actually playing well well. It leaves you with the kind of relief where you're glad you got it done because you never want to do it again.
Still, that's only two levels out of the 30+ in the main game mode. 1001 Spikes is an expertly made game in every aspect but those low notes did stick with me.
I liked this game and I say that as someone who has never played a Resident Evil game before, so I could be totally wrong about my enjoyment of this game.
I have no idea how it ties in or compares to other entries but I had a good time playing it and the story wasn't too hard to understand.
The whole "episodic" structure is a bit odd but it makes sense when you consider that it was originally a handheld game (I played the HD version on PC). Raid mode is a lot of fun too.
FFIII is my favorite in the series and it is also, coincidentally, my favorite dress up game. The job system is pretty much all this game's got going for it so it's a good thing it's a lot of fun to mess with.
This game's a fun little puzzle box with a neat presentation and some clever tricks. You can solve all of the puzzles (with the exception of one that requires some outside knowledge) by yourself and without a guide since most the clues are immediately visible once you start the game. It's nice little thing to sit down with for a couple of hours so you can try and figure it out.
It's been a while since I played a 3D platformer and Grow Home is a delightful little game that helped remind me why I enjoy the genre so much.
The climbing controls are very intuitive because once you get your hands on it climbing becomes second nature immediately. Making BUD walk though is another story...
You see, you don't tell BUD where to go in this game. You do not control BUD. You simply suggest what direction he should travel in. For the most part, he tends to go where you want him to, but if you want to traverse any sort of incline then you'd better get to climbing.
In the time it takes to read this sentence BUD has already tripped and is now falling towards the planet's surface. Now I'm not complaining, I think the wonky movement in Grow Home adds a bit more to it. I mean, I did laugh every time he wandered to close to an edge and just took a dive right off of it. It moments like those that make the game a little bit more memorable.
I think Dishonored is a great game, which isn't a controversial thing to say in the slightest. I do find it a bit funny though because the first time I tried playing it I didn't even get past the tutorial before I decided I wasn't into it and returned the game. I'm not sure why I felt that way at the time and I'm not sure what happened in the 2 year interim period to make me change my tune either.
I played through the game on Hard and managed to not kill a single person over the course of the game, which was very rewarding but also kind of strangely easy. I realize that they wanted to make every angle of approach viable but I felt like stealth and the non-lethal method of dispatching targets, because it was so highly incentivized, was what I was "supposed" to do.
I'll definitely go back to this at some point just to mess around with it (and finish the DLC) but I'm really glad I gave Dishonored a second chance.
---
So, what's next for me as far as staying on track with this whole "finish 100 games thing"? Well, I crunched some numbers and it looks like I'd have to finish 9.5 games each month to get to 100 by the end of the year. As for what I'll be playing, I did start Alien: Isolation a few days ago and I bought like 30 games in the recent Steam sale. There's also a few games that I've started but have yet to finish; Akiba's Trip: Undead & Undressed, Odin Sphere and Neverending Nightmares are a couple that immediately come to mind. I've also been buying almost every visual novel that's popped up on Steam (I thought it would be a fun goof) and I've yet to get into any of those.
I'm definitely going to do another one of these write ups at the end of the year though whether or not I reach my goal. Here's hoping I don't totally burn out by then!
Log in to comment