I will update this list with games as I finish them during the course of 2013, and write a shot paragraph for each containing my foremost thoughts on them. This isn't meant to be anything special, just a way for me to keep tabs on my gaming history for a while, and it helps me stretch my writing muscles to boot.
A nice, atmospheric 2.5D puzzle game. Perfect for a newcomer, like me, who is slowly transitioning into more in-depth puzzlers. I appreciate how the game's soundscape focuses on quietness and ambience.
An interesting little game with simple, yet fun game mechanics and a thoughtful story to guide you through the gameplay. I felt that this game wants the player to be immersed in it and examine the world it builds around your character, and to its credit, it gives you plenty of time to play around. The game changes towards the end, where the focus shifts away from gameplay and more towards the "message", giving the player some time to reflect on the world and what it was trying to convey. I was sucked into the hype, and was quite underwhelmed by the experience. I would recommend playing this, not at full-price.
I am not much of a platformer fan. It is not due to me having anything particular against the genre, but that kind of twitch, precision gameplay coupled with the general lack of a meaningful story; by and large just goes against what I thought I wanted from video games. That is, until I dove head first into Guacamelee. I don’t know what urged me so strongly to just devour that game, but I was clearly in the right head space and it was on (like Donkey Kong).
The controls feel tight, and movement with the Dualshock 3’s d-pad felt good. It was so good, in fact, that whenever I was faced with a hard platforming section that got the better of me, I was convinced that I could ultimately beat it without any outside help. The combat mechanics are simple, but get the job done well, which means that the player is never outmatched in a fight. Lastly, the story, art-style and general milieu, including the internet meme-themed humour are all serviceable; to get a few chuckles here and there, and to move the player along in the world. The real rockstar here is the gameplay.
I was never able to really get on board with the story, so level progression seemed disjointed to me. After a while I stopped caring why 47 was in a courthouse and in a jail and at a luxury apartment building or how he got from A to B to C. What really bothered me throughout the game was the score indicator. Why could we not just make it disappear in the settings? The meter kept bugging me, because I felt like I had to play a certain way to appease the Gods of Successful Hitmaning. This is when I took a three month break from the game. I came back to it determined to just muscle through the levels in whatever way possible, and that's when I found myself enjoying the experience more than I ever did before -by ignoring the blasted score ticker. A pretty looking game that portrays a wonderfully sleazy world with fabulously horrible characters. Too bad it isn't very good.
I didn’t feel a connection with this game at all. Having heard a lot of talk about the tough choices and their consequences, as well as the introspective examination of war (and whatnot), I thought there might be a gem of a story there behind all that middling gameplay. For me, there wasn’t. That’s not to say that the story wasn’t enjoyable, I tried to be engaged and I was to an extent, but my own expectations for it probably hindered my ability to enjoy it for what it was. Not a crafty masterpiece, just another ok game.
An enjoyable action-adventure story with solid third person controls –overall a great package. I left all of my previous Tomb Raider knowledge at the door as I booted up this game for the first time, it is unequivocally its own thing and anyone would be best served to abide by that mindset. I felt the character of Lara Croft was quite relatable and appreciated the fact that she was bumbling about in the beginning when all of that disaster survival stuff was all so new to her. There is of course the issue of dissonance between what the character is supposed to be like, and how she comes off as during gameplay, but anyone with a trained video game brain can put that stuff aside (still waiting for that game where the main character is actually a fragile human being). The game is solid through and through, but as is often the case, it does start to come apart from the seams a little towards the end. Even though there is a fair bit of variety in the weaponry, combat does start to drag on as the story progresses from one fight to the next. There are lots of collectibles and side distractions in the game which you can go hunt for during or after the story ends; I did my collecting as I was completing the story and was not compelled to go through the grind after the fact –as interesting and pretty (graphically) the game world was.
Wow. I cannot recall when I've been sucked in to a game's story and cared for the main character(s) quite like in the Last of Us. Cinematically very well executed, highlighted by moments when animation merges with regular gameplay (almost) seamlessly. A great send off to this generation of games.
The gold standard of Grand Theft Auto games might be hindering their own success… I was excited, anxious and ready to play on day one as GTA V launched, and I gobbled up the narrative and really immersed myself into the world it was setting up. A week later, I was finished with the story, gotten all I could out of it, glad for the experience, yet still underwhelmed by it. The game looks great, plays better than any GTA game to date, and has heist missions (like in Heat, yo). It does so many things so well, that one is left with an almost unjustifiable feeling of disappointment when the game isn’t more like the way that they felt it should have been. As with all things, check your expectations. One pet peeve of mine was the fact that the game would score you after completing a mission (gah, Hitman: Absolution and AC IV all over again). Otherwise, it is a fantastic game that maybe has a little too much going on for its own good. In my mind, it is best to appreciate GTA V for what it does do, and not harp on the things it does not, as that is an easy way to sour the great experience it has to offer.
Borderlands 2 is a lot of fun. I played the whole of the main campaign and the four DLC campaigns with three of my friends, which is probably why I had as much fun with it as I did. I went into the game a little begrudgingly –and sort of out of a sense of obligation to my friends –but the gunplay, accompanied by the special powers and the loot-grind hooks very quickly got me and reeled me in. Gameplay is key here, and it is fast and exciting, especially when fighting tough enemies in co-op and applying different strategies when the number one option, “shoot everything,” fails. I couldn’t make anything of the story, exceptionally hard to follow when four friends are running around picking up other quests and incessantly cracking wise when it’s supposed to be story-time. I assume the story beats were there just to move the players on to the next fight scenario, and if not –I think I’m okay with not fully knowing what was going on; the bulk of my enjoyment came from kicking ass with my buddies. That being said, I’m glad that there’s a little bit less for us to do now and a little bit more time to play some slower paced games.
