Let's see if I can finish anything in between nightly Overwatch comp matches. I would like to finish off my PSP collection so I can box that system up. Update: As an experiment I decided to cut off home internet between June 1 and September 1. By cutting out a major distraction, my goal is to increase the number of games I play a year (among other things I wish to accomplish). I have an insanely long backlog I want to work on.
Finished February 2017. I have never been more bored playing a game. You just mash one button and stuff happens. I like the FF7 universe, even after it reached peak Nomura, but the gameplay was tedious.
Finished February 2017. The writing and voice acting turned me off. Too corny, not like how teenagers talk. I liked the spooky music and the art. It was a fun little play through.
Finished April 2017. I was really looking forward to this game and it did not disappoint. I was late to Yoko Taro's works, but I'm now a huge fan. Platinum did a great job with the combat. Probably one of the best soundtracks this year. What happened during Ending E was the most moving experiences I've seen in games. This feels like a game I'll come back to every few years to play.
Finished May 2017 & June 2017. 280 hours later I finished two complete playthroughs of Persona 5. Of course I love this game. Shin Megami Tensei/Persona is my favorite franchise going back to Persona Revelations. However, I am disappointed by the flow of the game. The pacing got monotonous. I found myself doing long stretches of one activity at a time. I spent hours only leveling up confidants, hours in a dungeon, or hours going through the story. The need to optimize your run to see all the content gave little room to mix things up. I loved the idea of theory crafting personas but there really wasn't a point to it. The one thing I would have liked in the game was a more developed Mementos, the procedural generated dungeon. In Persona 5, Mementos exploration is gated at certain story points. I would have preferred if it gated progression through difficulty. Having an endless dungeon and procedural generated missions would have added a way to break up the story sections of the game with action and give the player reasons to create insanely powerful persona.
Finished May 2017. I really enjoyed the first Emily is Away released in 2015 because it hit a real nostalgia button. I recall that game taking place in 2004/2005 to university students, the exact time I was in college living out my own relationship drama over AOL Instant Messenger. Emily Is Away Too takes place a few years later to high school students, so I was connected to the characters a little less, but the story itself was more fleshed out. The game relies on some pretty shallow mechanics; essentially a game of "gotcha" but I really enjoyed the story it was telling.
Finished June 2017. I was really disappointed by 2064: ROM. Mechanically it was a very casual click-through-dialog adventure game. I was expecting more puzzles. I wouldn't mind the gender fluid, choose-your-own-pronoun, queer friendly, otherkin themes of the game if it did anything interesting with them. While it was a nice surprise hearing familiar voices doing VO (Dan Ryckert and Xavier Woods), the VO was bad and often poorly recorded. Overall I didn't enjoy this game.
Finished July 2017. Had I known how much I would have enjoyed P4A I would have played it much sooner. I thought it would be a fighting game with a throw away fan service plot, but instead it's a really well-written visual novel punctuated with fighting game segments. I think I enjoyed the Labrys plot more than anything in Persona 5. I have Persona 4 Arena Ultimax sitting on the shelf, but I plan to wait a little while before jumping in.
Finished September 2017. Something I played on and off through the summer. This was by far my favorite Yakuza thus far. Switching off between 4 characters really breathed new life into the series. I particularly liked Akiyama the moneylender. I usually mainline through the story in the Yakuza series, but this is the first time I explored more side quest activities. They still aren't that varied (either beat up a bunch of people or chase someone down) but subplots were often enjoyable.
Finished October 2017. Spooky game for October. Incredibly short, only four chapters played over 2 hours. The latter half didn't live up to the very strong first half.
Finished December 2017. I had high hopes for this game from watching Vinny play it in a quicklook. It had a unique vibe and art style. Set in a futuristic Mongolian Steppe. I've always wanted to see a cyber future story set in the peripheries of society. What is Blade Runner Wyoming like? Sadly this is a mediocre puzzle adventure game with a convoluted story. Half the game is spent searching around a single one room yurt looking for the next thing that will progress the story and the other half of the game involves a repetitious minigame akin to the busywork found in Minecraft. Very unsatisfactory ending. Glad to cross it off the list.
Finished December 2017. I played a lot of Starcraft between 1999 and 2001 but I never touched the campaign. I would play no-rush skirmishes with high school friends over TCP/IP because none of us had legitimate copies of the game to play over battle.net. I picked up the Remaster hoping to get caught up on the story before I move on to Starcraft II. The writing doesn't quite hold up. Pretty goofy, but I enjoyed it.
Finished December 2017. Counting Brood War as a separate entry because it's a long campaign. Enjoyed my time with it. Micro in Starcraft is hard to manage. I got spoiled on later RTS games that allow better group management and letting the player know when there are idle workers.
Finished December 2017. Very short puzzle adventure game to finish up 2017. Reminds me a lot of an Amanita Design game like Botanicula or Machinarium. You move around panels to progress. Good art and music. Wish it were longer than 2 hours.
