Kibles

VINNY!

Optimus Prime welcomes you back to Xcom. This is great news, because Massive Chalice has me itching for a new Xcom.

Can we all take a moment to appreciate how Dan only spent one sentence talking about the fart jokes? I would not have that level of restraint.

I legitimately liked the game. It was refreshingly basic, which sounds strange. Too many games nowadays have thousands of guns and hundreds of enemy types to fight, and it gets bloated and annoying. It's the reason most people didn't like The Force Unleashed, it just added too much bullshit and wasn't the basic "killing stormtrooper fun". The Order trimmed all the bullshit away, giving you the few types of guns that you would only ever use in other shooters anyways and a few enemy types removing the unfun "crazy" enemies.

I thought the story was pretty enjoyable, too. They twist the Knights of the Round Table fable in a fun way, adding in a gothic enemy type that feels like a holy order would secretly fight. What I really liked about the story, besides setting and such, was that it didn't feel like it had to explain every single thing that had happened or would happen. Why does Igraine have a scar? It doesn't matter, so why would you waste time doing some hammy, cliche explanation of how she's "tougher because of it". What happens to the vampires next and where do they come from? I don't care where they come from, it's some fun world building that lets you know that the order isn't taking on every single problem in the world. Sure the whole package was pretty rote, but sometimes that isn't a bad thing. Sometimes you just want a dumb romance movie like Titanic.

People keep comparing The Order to Gears of War, which I don't think is entirely fair. They're both third person cover shooters, but Gears of War has much slower combat, fighting bullet-sponge enemies, and The Order is quick and snappy. Uncharted is a little bit closer, but the aim in that game felt floaty and imprecise. You can shoot super accurately in The Order, aim very quickly, and best of all kill people with one damn headshot. All in all, I had a great time with The Order, but I can absolutely understand why other people didn't.

I'm Alex Navarro.

Star Wars Episode 1: Jedi Power Battles. I still don't know why I spent so much damn time playing that game, but by god if I didn't have fun with it.

It seems like the 3 most frequently cited games I've been told are Final Fantasy 7, Dark Souls, and some variation of Zelda.

So I was thinking about a bunch of games earlier today, specifically a few that vastly changed my understanding or feeling towards video games as a whole. My question to ya'll is this: what 5 games have completely changed how you play, look at, think about, or feel about games? These games don't have to be your favorite (hell, you might not even like them), but they do have to have had a serious impact on your gaming mentality. EDIT: Your list also doesn't have to be 5. If you can only think of a single game that was a lamppost for you, name it!

My 5:

Shadow of the Colossus - Before SotC I had just seen games as a time-waster, no thought required, no emotional investment, no real meaning to them. SotC made me look at how games made me feel without using any dialogue. I felt genuinely sad for these creatures I was killing for selfish reasons and started to hate my character for what he was doing for greed. For the first time I looked past the surface-layer of a game and actually saw what the meaning behind the game mechanics meant. Because of SotC I don't look at games for just their entertainment value anymore, I look at them for their meaning and <insert pretentious reason here>. SotC is the sole reason I started caring about "art" games.

Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - This game was a huge influence on my childhood, but what it really did for me was make me really appreciate and enjoy parts of the game that aren't necessary to beat it. Spending hours upon hours getting the Biggoron Sword and finding Golden Sketullas was the first time I enjoyed what could be called tedious tasks in games. I probably have OCD now because of this shit. I will also fight to the death anyone who doesn't like OoT, you know, to prove them wrong.

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater - Story. MGS3 was my first MGS game and really the first story-driven game I really enjoyed. I can't actually recall giving a single meaningfully shit about story games until I tried out MGS3. Yeah I had played a few Final Fantasy games (including 4, 6, and 7), but I was never actually hooked by the stories. Now I never skip cutscenes or dialogue in games for fear of losing some crucial piece of story information.

Legend of Zelda - The single reason I started playing video games. I was only 4 or 5 when I first played it, but after trying it out for a little bit (and taking hours to even find the first level) I couldn't stop playing. I forgot about all the other NES games my family had and only played this one thing for what seemed like forever.

Super Metroid - Along with Legend of Zelda this game defined my early gaming years. Super Metroid introduced me to the "water-cooler" part of games, talking with my friends about how to get past certain levels or secret areas. We came into Super Metroid a few years after it came out, but when one of us got it we all got it. Those days were like our mini ARGs we had constant discussions about. Super Metroid was to me what Fez is to the Giant Bomb crew. Somehow Super Metroid got me loving the idea of teamwork even though it's a single-player game. This game directly lead all of my friends and I into doing the goddamn same thing with Pokemon Red, but multiple magnitudes more.