ArbitraryWater's pre-Game of the Year Blog Blogapalooza Hyper Fighting '

Oh hey guys! I wrote that Code Name S.T.E.A.M. review, which took me longer than it should have. Now that junk is out of my life, I can write about the other bajilliondy games I played since the last time I wrote a thing about games, before eventually writing two Game of the Year blogs sometime in the next week (unless I want to get dangerous and wait until 2016). Buuuuut, before I write those, or finalize those lists, I need to play a little more Xenoblade Chronicles X and Disgaea 5, both very Japanese, very lengthy and systems heavy. I don’t have a ton to say about either right now, other than that Xenoblade seems promising and Disgaea might just be the only tactics game of this year that I’ve enjoyed in any capacity. That leaves me with… everything else.

Star Wars Battlefront

Hey, that new Star Wars movie was pretty good. Know what’s okay but isn’t as good as The Force Awakens? Star Wars Battlefront. I have a lot of fond memories of those old Pandemic-developed Battlefront games, and pretty much spent an entire summer playing Battlefront 2 split-screen with a friend. Not online. (A simpler time, when Oblivion blew my middle-schooler mind and I still thought Episode 3 was kind of cool). I’m not going to pretend those games were top-tier amazing shooters, nor do I really have any understanding if they were actually great online multiplayer games. All I know is… you probably shouldn’t compare the new one to them. They’re not at all similar besides the basic concept of “Star Wars Team-Based Shooter” I bought this new EA/DICE Star Wars thing as a birthday present for my brother, and being the great sibling that I am, I’ve played my fair share of it too, to make sure it isn’t… poison, or something. It’s a more simplistic Battlefield with a Star Wars wrapper and not nearly enough maps or character progression unlocks for a shooter that came out in the year of our lord 2015. That’s… pretty much the long and short of it. The shooting itself is good, even if you die a little too quickly for my tastes, given the impressive range and accuracy of most of the weapons. It almost makes me want to play a more fleshed-out competitive shooter that can scratch that itch. Almost. The hidden upside of Battlefront being stupid popular is that a lot of the people who play it clearly haven’t played a ton of video games. As someone whose reflexes are hardly as sharp as they were when back in the days of Modern Warfare 2, this is a great boost to my self-esteem. A lot of the large maps (I’ve mostly been playing Walker Assault, that seems like the mode to pay attention to) are a little too open, which makes picking off those too slow or foolish to find cover far easier than it should otherwise be. It fits the baseline of competence and doesn’t really go any further than that. Regardless, what I think of it doesn’t really matter since my brother seems to really like it and the only other game he plays with any regularity is FIFA ‘16, which tells you all you need to know about his tastes.

Transformers Devastation

I’m a 90s kid, which means only I will understand things about old Nickelodeon shows and… Furbies. Or something. Gen 1 Transformers was before my time, so when you break out your old man talk about how that animated movie made you cry, I can only think of the Transformers shows from the early 2000s and, of course, Michael Bay’s quadirology of exceptionally stupid, lowest-common-denominator garbage films that just so happen to feature robots that are in disguise. But know what I do have a fondness for? Platinum Games, which developed Transformers Devastation in their second hot collabo with Activision, the first being the stripped down and generally bad Legend of Korra. I’ll give Transformers credit, it’s a much better game than Korra was, even if it reeks of the same kind of limited-budget mercenary work that made Korra equal parts frustrating and dull. Transformers isn’t dull, but it is remarkably short and a tad light on content. As someone who needed a character action fix (because, let’s face it, there probably won’t be a Bayonetta 3 anytime soon) it did the job just fine. The combat succeeds in the Platinum vein of being fast, fluid and satisfying, though it’s also watered-down and mashy compared to the better installments in the genre. The inclusion of stuff like stats, random loot and weapon upgrades add an illusion of depth, but didn’t actually seem to have much meat on them by themselves. It’s also not all that challenging on its default difficulty. I played the 5-6ish hour campaign as Bumblebee, but as far as I can tell there isn’t a ton of difference between him and the other 4 characters present other than some minor moveset and equipment variations (Grimlock can’t equip some of the more specialized guns, for example.) Sorta like Metal Gear Rising, it’s fairly obvious that most of the value is to be found by replaying it with other characters or on higher difficulty, though if I’m going to do that for anything I played this year, it’s going to be Devil May Cry 4 Special Edition. It’s the kind of fun, but disposable, experience that makes me glad I only paid $25 for it. Yet, I also cannot fault it in any serious way. Transformers Devastation is probably the textbook definition of a 7/10 game, but it’s good enough that if you have any affinity for the source material or need your Platinum fix it will probably be worth your time.

Tales from the Borderlands

Can we take a step back and acknowledge the speed at which people shifted from “Enthusiastic” to “Indifferent” in regards to Telltale games? I know 2012 was not a particularly hot year for video games, but that first season of The Walking Dead sure was a big deal! It won multiple game of the year awards! And yet… by that last episode of The Wolf Among Us (which I liked), it seemed almost accepted knowledge that first season of TWD was lightning in a bottle, and now that it had been dissected and its formula applied to other things it was no longer magical. I probably agree with that, but I have fantastic news for all of you: Tales from the Borderlands is probably better than The Walking Dead. It might not have the advantage of novelty, but it does have the advantage of surprise. Who thought something with the Borderlands name on it would actually have good writing, interesting characters and humor that isn’t cringe-inducing? Not I. But, against all odds, it’s actually great and does a better job making me like the setting of Borderlands than the 3 loot shooters also sharing that name (it probably helps that there are some light jabs at the expense of Borderlands 2’s meme-soaked attempts at comedy) What I mean when I say it’s better than The Walking Dead mostly comes from the part where it isn’t on a one-way train to bummer city at all times. I’m tired of constant misery the same way I’m tired of zombie cliches. Where it falters… is the same place every other Telltale game falters, namely that it’s barely interactive and barely pretends your meaningless choices have much meaning to them besides flavor. I’m not really interested in having an argument on what is or isn’t a video game, but the combination of choose-your-own-adventure style choices and the occasional dead-easy QTE sequence don’t impress me anymore. As someone who likes my games to be “games” first and foremost, it’s almost condescending when Telltale lets you walk a character around an environment, as if it still needs to remind you that at one point these were supposed to be a modern take on the point-and-click adventure titles they made in the years prior (that King’s Quest revival does a far better job of making adventure games for the rest of us without going full Visual Novel). It’s good that the writing and the story are as strong as they are, though I’m still not convinced that has to come at the cost of having interesting gameplay. There’s also the usual bevy of weird bugginess that seems to creep into all of these games, but I think it’s still worth mentioning because this was the first time one of my choices was screwed up in the carry-over from one episode to the next. Still, quibbles aside, I totally enjoyed Tales from the Borderlands and think if you haven’t totally tired of the Telltale formula by now, it’s well worth checking out

And that’s it from me… for now. Expect my Game of the Year blogs in a few days. As a reward for getting this far, here's a random clip from GFW Radio that I was reminded of after watching a decent amount of Run Button's LP of every Sonic game.