Games I completed in 2015
Keeping it going through 2015. Not as many games finished as 2014.
Looking back, there's plenty of good stuff there which I completely forgot I finished. My age showing?
List items
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January - Laughed all the way through, and it didn't stick around too long (10 hours to clear in all). As a South Park fan, they did a decent job of balancing the new stuff with the old references.
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January - So close to being really great. I just wish there were bigger enemy groups, as once the game speeds up they space out just a bit too much. Loved the movement, and the weapon selection is as varied and wacky as I wanted it to be. The amps are really cool, as well. For what it's worth, I thought the way it repeatedly tapped on the fourth wall was fun.
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January - Ended up not buying this for over a year because of a completely terrible demo. Really enjoyed it in the end - though the random battle encounter rate is too high in areas with puzzles - the last few areas just became annoying. Luckily there's an item to reduce the encounter rate to zero. The battles are good though, and the plot ended up being enjoyable enough with some great voice acting. The worst part? No Vita TV support.
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January - A nice extra chunk of Infamous. It'd been a long while since I finished Second Son so it was nice to get back to the same map. Didn't outstay its welcome either. I'd also forgotten how good the audio in Second Son was, and the acting was as convincing as ever. There's a bit at the start which I'm sure is just them showing off how good their motion capture is.
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[DLC collection]
Both of these were interesting. I liked the hacked-together feel of Enter the Dominatrix and the "prototype" cutscene videos (especially the live action one!), though the boss could have been better. Saints Save Christmas was more complete and had some funny lines. After playing Infamous again, the OTT movement in SR4 felt more stiff and limiting, which I didn't expect. I'm glad I played through these for the £1 I paid for them, but I'm going to wait and see on Gat Out Of Hell because these were both pretty short.
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February - Probably my favourite dungeon crawler ever. Great sense of accomplishment and a surprising amount of gimmicks which don't spoil things - in fact, they add some needed variety. The last boss was a fucker though, 20 minutes of walking around just to get to it! Going to go for the Platinum (first since FF13-2) as I'm already 88% of the way there.
[2017 note - I spent about 5 hours trying to get those last rare drops for the platinum and they just didn't appear!]
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[2015 edition]
March - main story completed - Sometimes you just need to click on stuff, and this does a great job at a good price. Stuttery as hell on my computer, though.
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[Episode Duscae]
March - Took a good four hours! Really looking forward to the full version. Full of little bits of detail and character.
[2017 note - oh dear!]
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March - The same, but more. More. More!!!
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April - This was really good. I didn't really get into Ori on Xbone, but this kept me going to the end. Super sharp controls and I like the way they approached the graphics a lot.
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June - Took full advantage of cross save during the 70+ hours it took me to get through this. Looking forward to the hopeful PS4 continuation of the Kiseki saga, preferably with a nice long gap! 7 long games in a little over 2 years is a lot of time for me to spend with a series getting caught up.
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[PS Vita Plus version]
June - Choppy framerate aside, it's just as good as on PS3. Soundtrack amazing as ever, especially on headphones - I'm glad that Gust are starting to go day and date on Vita with both Yoru no Nai Kuni and Atelier Sophie. I'll almost certainly double dip on the next Atelier.
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July - Part one of my "clear Musou game story modes before Sengoku Basara 4 Sumeragi comes out" campaign. I enjoyed being able to follow the story as someone with very limited exposure to One Piece, but it felt a bit less balanced than 2 and was a fair bit easier, even below recommended levels. As a side note, someone needs to nail Hisashi Koinuma to a board at the top of a mountain until he learns that on PS4 the pause button is Options, not the touch pad, and the person who decided to block all cutscenes from video recording - with the endless notifications that result - should never, ever be allowed near a videogame again.
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July - All songs cleared on Free mode (didn't even get a fucking trophy!). Fuck the story mode, I'm not doing that unless I'm bored one afternoon and skip through all the text scenes. Actually made me like the P4 soundtrack less. Hard to play as the notes blend in with the background too easily (yellow on yellow is tough, even in motion). Some great mixes but it does feel hit or miss - one of the free DLC songs is probably the worst song I've ever played in a rhythm game and it's a remix of a track I really like! Note charts are pretty universally uninteresting, even though they've got 6 buttons to play with. Story mode is a low-effort over-wordy VN (before I'd played something like VLR I'd have called that redundant language) which is still somehow buggy.
If you liked the anime, I'm sure there's plenty for you to like, but as a rhythm game and P4 game fan, this isn't for me. Oh yeah, and it's a real fucking paltry number of songs (25 plus two free DLC which don't even have dances - just video) for a full-price game where the guy who wrote all of them works for the same company.
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July - This was great. Just super responsive, loads of stuff to do and a surprising amount of challenge. I'm not convinced that the post-game stuff in Donder Quest is possible without a lot of practice but I can still play happily in free mode with the 90 songs I have.
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[part of Rare Replay]
Took me long enough but finally finished the campaign. 360 version works great on Xbox One.
edit: then I put on Perfect Dark Zero and it's just as bad as I remember. Choppy, indistinct graphics and some of the worst aiming on a console shooter. Coming from some surprisingly sharp controls (albeit ones running three times as smooth as the original) it's a big shock.
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August - Easily Experience's weakest release. It's just too easy, which makes any challenge they put in irritating instead of actually challenging. I beat the last boss without even looking at the screen.
On the flip side, the story - well, the characters at least - was the strongest I've seen in an Experience game yet. As long as they don't make the same series of bad decisions with the battle system in Demon Gaze 2 and their Xbox One projects, I'm expecting their next game to be a triumphant return to form. The battle system and character advancement made me wonder if there was some publisher meddling in there, this being their first game with Bandai Namco. At least all that Kadokawa does is add pointless fanservice scenes...
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August - Good, if a bit samey after a while. There looks to be a good amount of post-game stuff to do, which is always nice.
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August - First one I've played, ended up quite short - it's clearly designed for multiple playthroughs. I appreciated the speed of the battles and the way you can even skip them completely late on in the game. Story was a bit nothing though and there's some stuff there that's no good for outdoor play.
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September - About two thirds of the greatest game ever. The core sneaking/extracting/killing game is so strong.
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September - A 3DS game!!!! A good solid entry in the seires, though I found the way that the notes are presented made it occasionally too hard to see what was happening. The target cursor traces a line and sometimes it gets very close to the edge, reducing the amount of time a note is on screen accordingly.
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October - Funny one this. It started out with a nice aesthetic and fun combat with loads of options but it just feels like they just had to stop making it when about 80% done, as the difficulty is way too low and there are entire systems which aren't even used in the game. Killer soundtrack though, and the first few hours were really good, with the game initially seeming like it had managed to keep the scale and scope within its means (not many characters, lots of maps, enemies reused as summons, loads of equippable items with unique properties) and the Musou style action is still fun and responsive.
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October - 40 hours in the end - loads of game in there. The story is as wordy as ever but the action sections give the game more balance and they don't skimp on the dungeons - though the designs are generally pretty basic there are over 30 to go through by the time you're finished. It more than makes up for some shoddy second-rate Persona ripoffery at the start and kind of becomes its own thing, eventually.
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October - Great fun. Not the longest game ever made but after dropping multiple games 20, 30 or even 40 hours in I like the idea of having something I can finish but want to come back to later. Could be a good introduction to Platinum-style character action games too.
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October - There's way more to this than the description "first person puzzle game by the Serious Sam people" would let on. The puzzles get hard but they stay rewarding throughout, and the way the story is presented is really great. It really shows off the power of the Serious Engine too, with enormous levels and seemingly no loading once you're in. The sense of scale is right up there at times. I gather it's out on PS4 as well, so if you don't have a powerful PC there is an alternative. There was relatively little dexterity required - less than Portal 2, certainly.
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October - Good shooting. Not as good as the original. It doesn't feel as well-balanced as The New Order as you can just use the assault rifle for pretty much everything. Still, there's nothing quite like popping off headshot after headshot in an id Tech engine. The stealth bits at the start are interesting but just not as satisfying as creeping around bases looking for enemy commanders to ambush. Can't wait to see what Machinegames has up its sleeve next.
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October - Certainly the easiest Halo on Heroic I've played. Good fun, though. The four man squad system rewards aggression more so it felt like a pretty non stop carnival of head shots and shotgun blasts with much less cowering. It still feels like Halo, but 343 have definitely put their own spin on it with the weapon zoom and sprinting (and that shoulder barge!)
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November - Lots of people have been complaining about the campaign but I ofund it fun enough, especially once I upgraded my semi-auto sniper rifle to make it into an absolute death machine. The PC version was OK for me but it's very heavy on the 780Ti and going under 60fps does bad things to the aiming. I reduced the rendering resolution a bit to keep textures on High as they are terrible on Medium, and I really wish I could have turned off the chromatic aberration.
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December - My first Atelier platinum, entirely due to the fact it's missing a lot of stuff compared to earlier games. No character or group endings, no second run through, relatively few vocal music tracks. The game itself is still fun and well worth it but it feels weird to put it away forever after just one playthrough.
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December - The main battle system just isn't good enough. Its ideas seem spread out across nearly 30 characters, making each one individually boring to play at best and actively infuriating at worst. Boss battles, especially towards the end, boil down to trading blows and using the game system to make sure you are invincible during heavy enemy attacks rather than being able to freely dodge or guard what's incoming. It's annoying because there are times with certain characters where you're trouncing groups of enemies or taking on multiple officer-class characters at once that it's genuinely fun.
I think the fact I've completed this rather than Dragon Quest Heroes speaks to how annoying I find the endless base defence missions in that.
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