Getting a head start on top ten games for the year. I'm hoping to write down a few things on each one so that by the end of the year, I remember why I thought what I did about each game. Will try to keep a list of each game played/hoping to play during the year, and re-sort as I get to them.
Getting towards the end of May, top game so far this year.
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02/19/10 - Have finished the game with one character, and have started two more with different character classes. Playing a character with some tech and biotic powers, I'm running into the one thing so far that I just don't like; everything is on one cool-down timer. I can see where having each power on a separate timer could be difficult to manage, and would end up having people go into the radial menu All. The. Time. However, playing a sentinel in particular I wish that the cool-down timers were split between tech, biotic, and ammo powers. If I was playing a straight biotic, I would probably feel differently, but unless there's some achievement I can only get with that class, I don't see wanting to play that way.<br>
09/20/10 - Played a bit over the weekend, and beat lair of the Shadow Broker with my Sentinel. Started a playthrough on Insanity with an Engineer. Only a level in so far; we'll see how that goes.<br>
09/28/10 - Yeah. Engineer. Not really fun. Now re-doing with original Infiltrator.
11/16/20 - Picked up on lunch. Haven't touched the story, and only had time to play one MP match before having to get back to work, but OMG. This is the online play I've been looking/waiting/hoping for.<br>
Stealthy, close, personal, tactical. I finished 6th out of 8 in my first match, and it could always fall apart with jerks, but the case of jitters I had after spending ten minutes mostly walking around was amazingly good.<br>
I've always been a fan of games that let me take my time and plan things; I imagine there'll be time(s) latter on where I'll get frustrated, but so far, this is really fun. My heart's beating a little bit faster thinking about getting back in, even though I know I'm going to spend most of the time <i>just walking around</i> crazy.<br>
11/24/10 - Obviously it's all arbitrary, and at a certain point trying to measure fun gets to be a waste of time, but I'm moving this above Alan Wake, and considering doing the same for Splinter Cell.<br>
12/16/10 - Moving above Splinter Cell. The somewhat open world tips the balance a bit.
04/28 - Basically finished. I will probably keep this around for the Deniable ops, or whatever the extra maps are called. I liked the challenge maps and ranking up from some of the PSP Syphon Filter games, and the maps here are serving much the same purpose. I like being able to go in for a few minutes at a time, and quit at a whim without feeling like I'm going to screw up the story or lose a bunch of work just before a save point kicks in.
I'm not really a MP sort of person, so I wish that the MP achievements had been separated from the single player, but otherwise this is pretty good.
Just for the extra maps, and the ability to go in and set some of the parameters for those maps, this goes above BioShock2.<br>
Got the ipod version on sale for .99 yesterday. Playing it reminds me how much fun I had with the console. It also reminds me though that even with all the weapons, etc. in the game, it was the 2nd or 3rd pistol I picked up, that took me through probably 80-90 percent of the game.<br>
Maybe I should pick this up again, some of the levels were really fun.
07/23/2010: Started playing on 07/20. Enjoying the story progression more than Red Dead at the moment. Maybe it's just the few days I played RDR for several hours, but the story there is feeling really drawn out.<br>
I'm not anywhere near as far in to Alan Wake yet, but so far having the more directed story to go through has taken my attention away from RDR.
11/01 - Picked up over the weekend. Only a couple hours in. Doing several fetch quests. Have a sword, a gun, and one magic.<br>
I should maybe go back and play part of Fable II for comparison, but otherwise I'm having fun so far. The menu room may get old after a while, but so far I like the ability to move around the map, and zoom in on towns to fast travel there. The interface for changing clothes, weapons, etc. is well done. It's nicer than having to go to a specific shop to try on new pants, or to dye something.<br>
I haven't had any serious fights so far, but the combat seems smooth and easy enough; it's nice having a single attack button that works contextually with a click, press-and-hold, or press-hold and aim with a thumb stick.<br>
Based on the other games I've played so far this year, It's opening at #4, below ME:2, SC:Conviction, and Alan Wake.<br>
11/09 - At a week in, I'm really not liking the inability to look at a list of active quests without going into the sanctuary. It's not bad when following the story, since that quest is always defaulted. When trying to run through multiple smaller quests, it's annoying to have to keep going back to the sanctuary and pick one of those instead of the main story quest.<br>
I can understand that they wanted to not have a standard menu just pop up, but with the design flourishes the game already has, why not have an option where your character pulls out a scroll, and writes things down, or crosses them off?<br>
Still pretty high on my list, but I can see where some of Brad's three-star rating came from. There are parts of the game I really like, so the parts that get in the way stand out that much more.<br>
11/16 - Finished the main storyline, and got a couple of achievements I was hoping for. Still planning to get all the Road To Rule chests open, but that may take a bit of a back seat to Assassin's Creed, which is opening at #4 based on a heck of a good time I had in the first 10-15 minutes.<br>
Moving Fable down at least to 5.
07/02/10 - An hour or so in to the game. Already better than Transformers. So far not as jump-scary as FEAR2, but weird in a similar way; environment and such are normal often enough that the <i>wrongness</i> of the mutated enemies stands out more than it did in something like Bioshock, where even the environment was unfamiliar.<br>
So far, going between Dark Void, and Bioshock2<br>
07/04/10 - Got a push/pull power in addition to the age/restore power. Actually more of a grab/throw power. Very similar to the gravity gun effect in Half Life.<br>
Considering moving this above Bioshock at least partially for the FEAR2 style weirdness in a somewhat regular environment.
03/23 - Only on the third main area, but I'm enjoying this more than the first one. At least so far, I'm enjoying the segmentation of the game. Each level is it's own separate area, so I'm not always wondering if there's something I missed an hour ago hidden in a corner of a level that I just happened to miss by bad luck. So far enjoying the open but focused nature of the levels; there are certain things that need to be done in certain places, such as the gathers and the big-daddy battles, but when you get to those fights, there isn't a single "right way" to handle them. And considering part of the reason I didn't care for the first game was lack of motivation, it's worth noting that the motivation for what you're doing in this game works for me.<br>
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04/03 - Finished the game. had a good time. No reason to re-play, but I liked the story overall.
06/01 - Picked up on release.<br>
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06/07 - Feels like I'm most of the way through the game. I've been to Moscow and Taipei. In Rome now. I think three stars is a pretty accurate score for this game. To me, a 3 out of 5 means that most folks could probably have a good time with the game, even if they weren't specifically into the genre, but would put it down in a heartbeat for a 3 star or better game in the style they enjoy.
While this isn't as polished as a few other games I've played so far this year, it's almost exactly the type of game I love. As such, it's going pretty high up on the list.<br>
Things to keep in mind: The textures have the same sort of pop-in that ME:1 did couple of years back. There are a few systems in the game that feel like the design for them started down one path, and then either got forcibly pulled in a different direction, or meandered off on it's own. The wires n' stuff overlay screen that comes up just before allocating skill points is one case in point.
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07/12/10 - It's weird. I know that technically this isn't as well done as BioShock or Singularity, but I like games with systems so much, I still feel like this deserves a place in my top five.<br>
11/09 - Or maybe not the five, eh? Still top ten?
08/16/2010 - Been playing off and on for the last couple weeks. I'm enjoying it more than I would have thought, based on some of the reviews I've read.<br>
Hard to categorize a race game against other things I've played so far this year. How do you measure <i>fun</i>? I'd say more fun than Dark Void or Transformers, because those games both had stand out flaws (mostly in the handling of AI buddies), but what about Singularity, or Alpha Protocol? I know, AP wasn't that good, but I <i>really like</i> that sort of game. I should probably move it down a bit.
06/15/2010 - Pretty good. I'm surprised at how much I'm enjoying this, even though I'm probably not even a 1/4 of the way through the story.<br>
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06/18/2010 - On hold for a bit, while I have some other games in from GameFly, and looking forward to Transformers next week.<br>
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07/14/10 - Picked back up last night. Very easy to get back in to.<br>
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08/16/10 - Picked up again about a week ago after rounding out the first DLC for Alan Wake.<br>
Don't remember his name, but the govt. guy that is holding his family's safety over Marston's head is so hateful that, taken in combination with having finished slogging through Mexico so soon before, I'm having to push myself into playing.<br>
Maybe this is a problem with trying to make a game too much like a movie. I know that guy gets dealt with in the end, but if RDR were a movie, I'd have a reasonable idea that things would resolve in about the next 20-25 minutes. As it is, I'm looking at probably a good hour or two. At this point, the redeeming thing about this game is everything <i>other</i> than the story.<br>
11/09 - Moving down a few rungs. The first part of the game was good. The middle section was not fun, and the mission system really dragged things down. As well, the ending(s) didn't seem too fun.<br>
Haven't finished it, but this is a fun game to go in and blow a little time on here and there. I suspect I'll go back to this periodically when I don't have any other games in the drive.
12/20/10 - Started playing a couple of days ago, when the Kinect arrived. Like comparing a comedy to a drama, it's hard to measure a movement based minigame collection against a bunch of other, more standard games.<br>
Despite this, I can easily start it at 12, above some of the other games on the list, just based on the amount of fun I've had with it so far.
12/23 - Been playing for a few days. Not bad. One of the best actual Spiderman games I've played in a while, actually.<br>
The web swinging seems to work; the web zip specifically is done really nicely. It might have been nice to have a "continuous swing" style for when he's just going places, but pulling a trigger isn't too much to ask for. The sticking to walls mechanic is done better than I expected it to as well.<br>
Combat's pretty standard across three of the spiderman so far, aside from 2099 being able to go into Bullet Time, and Noir being able to do the stealth takedowns, the specials don't seem to do much for the characters. On that note, I feel like Ultimate really could have been taken out of the game; the world and character are too similar to Amazing for there to feel like there's much to separate them. At least with 2099 and Noir, the worlds have a noticeably different feel to them.<br>
Probably going to finish the game, but maybe on Easy instead of Normal. I'm more interested in seeing the character interactions and getting the story than I am to prove anything by keeping the difficulty where it is.
Well, it turns out Capcom got $5.00 more out of me than they would have without releasing this prequel. Not sure what it is, but so far haven't spent more than a few minutes with it.
12/09/10 - Hard to rate, since I did not finish the game. I think this is a great example of when I could tell a game was Good, but just not Fun For Me.
My natural inclination to put things in a certain order, combined with reading PsEG's posts about quest stat tracking make me want to open up Excel and start graphing Good and Fun for the year. Hmm.
Not bad. Not really my style of game, but interesting.
10/10/10 - played the other day. really didn't feel it. After the basic "win a race to proceed" of split/second, I couldn't see the interest in knowing that I would be re-doing almost every race at least twice to satisfy some boss character's wish list of criteria which would allow me to proceed.
06/18/2010 - Playing for a couple days. Not bad. Haven't done any flying yet, so we'll see how that goes. It's hard to tell for sure, but sometimes when I'm shooting things, it feels like the hits aren't registering when the enemy is going through their animation. Even if that's the case, it's not to the point where it seems broken.<br>
06/22/2010 - Finished. Not bad, but not really that great.
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06/28/10 - Been Playing for a few days. Single player, campaign only, so far. Disappointed. lots of nice little graphical touches. The movement of the parts for each character has individuality. I got distracted during one fight just watching Megatron's back and side plates move.<br><br>
Similar to Dark Void though, having AI buddies that don't seem to hit anything more than 1 time out of 5, nor react to getting hit just seems stupid. I don't want to be able to stand back and let the AI win the game for me, but if I'm playing as Bumblebee, I should NOT be racking up that many more kills than Optimus, even if he isn't a prime yet. There are also a few times where I've felt like I was getting targeted simply because I wasn't an AI. Maybe there's a logic there; the enemy AI attacked me because technically the friendly AI wasn't actually doing any damage.<br>
The targeting also seems intentionally broken. With the exception of a rocket launcher weapon that locks on to vehicles, everything is just a reticule on screen that has to be aimed manually. If I'm playing a robot, I would expect at least some sort of lock-on feature. I could even see having the lock be more or less effective depending on class, but not having one at all makes me wonder what the design philosophy was that made High Moon decide to take it out.<br>
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06/29/2010 - Just noticed that having played through about 3/4 of the single-player, and none of the multi, I have a B grade for this game on the GiantBomb scale.
I guess I'm just really not that into Kart racing. Maybe if I had someone else in the house who liked to play, it would have been a better experience.
07/11/10 - Started this. not too sure yet. Maybe time to go back to Red Dead for a bit.
07/13/10 - Just not feeling it, especially when I was able to get back in to Red Dead in about two minutes after being away from it for almost a month.<br>
Maybe if I hadn't heard so much about it on the bombcast, I would be more interested, but there's something about the graphics, and the way it plays that just aren't grabbing me.<br>
Watching the quicklook is confirming that this is going back in the mail today.
Holey moley. Who in their right mind thought a light gun game for a console without a lightgun would be a good idea. I feel bad enough for the time I spent on this as a rental, what about those poor people who spent money on this?
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