The end of the year is steadily approaching! Pretty soon it'll be 2015 and it'll be one year closer for until I can think about this dumb video every single day without feeling a single shred of shame! Giant Bomb and it's community are also doing all sorts of neat stuff for Game of the Year and I'm going to join in as well! (I made a list, it's not done but you should take a look at it!). I buy a lot of games, the problem is that I rarely finish any of them! So for the entire month of December I'm going to try and finish as many games that came out this year that I possibly can. I have dubbed this "event" the DECEMBER RUSH.
These blogs will serve as mini-reviews as well as a little bit of writing practice for me. I'm probably going to head out of town for the holidays so I probably have about 2 or 3 weeks to get this done. As of right now I've got about 20 or so games left to play but I'm sure there's a couple I haven't accounted for. Also, I'm probably going to add some more screenshots or something for the next entries to avoid the huge walls of text that lie ahead.
Game 1: Always Sometimes Monsters
Time to completion: 8 hours.
It's hard to talk about this game without spoiling anything about it since it's basically all story. The basic premise is your character; who's race, gender and sexual orientation you choose at the beginning of the game, is an author who is down on their luck with no money to their name. You hear that your ex is getting married across the country and you're determined to get their by any means necessary.
There are tons of decisions to make and things to do in this game. I'm going to avoid talking about them because of spoilers but I will say that most of the major decisions are you deciding between the lesser of two evils. I tried my hardest to not absolutely screw everything up (except for one choice I made near the end that was obviously the bad one) but in the end, well, things didn't end up so well for my character. It's an interesting game that's for sure but it's one of those games that everyone should at least watch a playthrough of. I'd be willing to play it again just to see how different the game can get.
Game 2: OlliOlli
Time to completion: 4 hours.
This game's great. I finished all of the normal Career levels and some of Pro versions. I'm the type of person has to get things perfect (or close to it) or else I won't feel satisfied with my performance in games like this. I feel like the way I play these sorts of games makes me enjoy them less than the average person would but at least I recognize it, right? I still think this game is pretty good but I won't be going for 100% completion anytime soon. Also, this probably has the best licensed soundtrack this year and I pretty much know every artist on it too!
Game 3: Child of Light
Time to completion: 12 hours.
This game is pretty good. The only downside to this game I found is the combat. I played through most of the game on Hard as I heard the default difficulty is way too easy (which it is). At first, I liked how simple it was but the mechanic of delaying enemies attacks was basically essential to your success. I needed to carefully time my delays and attacks in order to take the least amount of damage possible, it was a lot of fun while still being somewhat of a challenge. It did however, get to the point where I felt underleveled and was faced with a boss that absolutely destroyed me no matter how well I thought I was doing against it. I switched over to Easy and combat was literallynot a problem.
Everything else about this game though? Outstanding! I really enjoyed the story, which is basically told like a fairy tale. It's very whimsical but it's not a completely sugar coated experience. All of the dialogue is recited in an extremely bizarre rhyme scheme (ABCB?? What is that nonsense?!) but it's really charming in a way. I kind of didn't really understand what anyone was saying for the first quarter of the game but I still enjoyed it. My favorite character is Rubella, who functions as your healer in battle, because every time she tries to rhyme she messes it up and someone else has to fix it for her! It's so freakin' good. That managed to get a smile out of me every time it happened so this game alright in my book!
Game 4: Cloudbuilt
Time to completion: 3 hours.
I've had this game for about half a year now and I'm starting to wonder why I waited so long to play it. It's a 3D platformer based around freerunning/parkour. Also you've got a gun and jets on your back. This game does so many things right, it's kind of hard to list them but I'm going to anyway.
This is a game where you're going to fail a lot, in Super Meat Boy when you died you respawned almost instantly. In Cloudbuilt the time from respawn to restart is actually zero (I'm exaggerating but it's really fast you guys). The levels are designed so well it's kind of unreal. The game doesn't direct you at all, your goal is to get to the red door in every level which is marked by a beam of light. The thing is though there's kind of no wrong way to go. As long as you're moving up and/or forward you're always going the right way. You can also place checkpoints wherever you want as long as you're standing still you probably won't be doing this since the levels are pretty short and the entire point of the game is to go fast but it's a nice addition for those that need it and it really helps on the harder stages.
This game also has a story, it's kind of secondary to all the gameplay stuff but the way it's told is kind of interesting. You play as a wounded veteran who is recovering from her injuries in a hospital. It's implied that all the actual gameplay takes place in your character's dream as a form of rehabilitation. There are three "paths" to take when completing levels and after completing each one you hear an inner monologue that is sort of related to the theme of the path you're on. For example the path I finished had a lot of combat in it and by the end the main character had concluded that these dreams were a way to prepare her for the battlefield once she has recovered. I'm not sure if I explained that pretty well but it's a cool way to tell a story, I think. I plan on revisiting this and finishing all the paths.
Game 5: Stranded
Time to completion: 40 minutes.
This game bills itself as a "minimalistic point & click adventure game", which it totally is. It also "forgoes dialogue and puzzle and focuses on atmosphere and mystery" which is perfectly fine with me. The only problem is there's simply not enough of it.
This game is gorgeous and the music (which isn't available anywhere to purchase, to my knowledge) does a good job in creating that "lonely astronaut" atmosphere this game is clearly going after but there are only around 16 or so different screens in this game, 32 if you want to count the night versions of the outside areas. This game attempts to build an atmosphere but there isn't quite enough areas to explore to actually make one worth experiencing.
There is a small sense of mystery on the small planet this game takes place on but it vanishes faster than it even has a chance to build into something worthwhile. I do like what this game is trying to do, it just feels like more of a proof of concept or a game jam game than a complete product. I'm not upset, mostly just disappointed.
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