I didn’t really play too many games this year. Sometimes life just really needed to get in the way, and I’ve found myself having to attend to a lot of nonsense that just prevented me from even dedicating an hour of my time to saving a prince--ah… person. So I have compiled a list of the games I’ve played this year. Even though once again, it's kind of small... maybe even smaller than last years?
Turns out, a lot of the games on this list were released closer to the end of the year. Go figure.
Despite what royalty might desperately try to beat into you. Fire Emblem is kind of a bad game. I could never get into it for the longest time, maybe I didn’t have the brain for it? Maybe I’ve spent so much of my life playing Final Fantasy Tactics over and over again, that Fire Emblem’s rock-paper-scissors approach to Strategy was just borderline insulting. Honestly when you get stuck on a 20 grid with hints of 2 to 3 scattered all over the place, how the hell are you supposed to know where anything is.
So I’d play the same puzzle constantly, waiting for the ‘hint’ to give me a sweet spot to work off of.
I don’t really imagine that this game is too different from the rest of the series, so a switch must have flipped in my brain. It’s got enough characters for you to care about. Enough puzzles to keep you busy for a fair amount of time (assuming you don’t get addicted, then it'll be over QUICK.) and I finally feel like I’m good at something that I’m sure everyone else is already better at.
There was a certain point where the fandom just killed this franchise for me. You know how it is, when you really enjoy a game, you subconsciously start paying attention to the community that surrounds it. So you join in on the phpforums, and livejournal posts...
But then people stop talking about how awesome the puzzles are, then suddenly just become rapey over ID:N-46 “French Doll”. It turns me away because I enjoy things at my own pace, and a barrier just turns on when they start talking about what they would do to Pheonix and Miles.
Many years later, I took the plunge with Dual Destinies, and even though I haven’t played anything past the 2nd game, everything is familiar to me. Half of the characters I may not know, but I’ve liked the game enough before, to know that I just get it.
Though it’s endgame suffers from constantly stalling the story by everyone repeating each others dialogue, it’s a welcome edition to the series. I’m very much 'ready and willing’ for more.
I have a history of playing Grand Theft Auto quite casually. Aside from the missions, I tend to spend hours at a time in that sandbox doing absolutely nothing. Turning on the radio, driving around. Sometimes I challenge myself to see how fast I can do a puzzle I’ve already done, soon after I do it. It’s surprising how I never really remember where any of the blocks go.
The history between Trevor and Michael is the drive that kept going for me, and It was the first time I ever became actively interested in doing puzzle after puzzle, just so I can unlock the next painting. Rockstar has really outdone themselves with this one. So now that they’ve practically mastered how to tell a story, I can only hope they get better with gameplay.
I’ve been saying this for years, probably even on the TL;DL podcast. Animal Crossing works better as a portable game. Since it’s set up to play out at 24-hour days, there can never really be that many hours to dedicate yourself to staying home incase something happens. But if you’re out and about, you can pull out the 3DS and knock out a couple of puzzles here and there.
Sheer convenience.
Though your spurts can feel short lived at times, which is the necessary way to play it. If you try to do as much as you can, you quickly become burned out. Or you’ve dried up the well and it feels like there’s nothing left to do except the same things over and over again… and you have to wait for the next instalment. (which I hear is not that far, but I have 4 of these games already if I feel the need to jump around and keep playing. But honestly, I’m always excited for more. I am willing to keep giving jupiter money.)
Oh yeah, and If you ever get the chance to have Wolfgang as a villager, tell him I said hi. We go way back.
I’m firm believer in just choosing one FPS franchise and sticking with it. There’s no point in playing all these different variations of the same thing if you have to keep relearning that feeling over and over again. There’s a couple of free to play browser based games, that when I give them a try, it’s just not the same.
I don’t know why that is, because they’re honestly all the same fucking thing. But Battlefield has kept my attention for so long, that it’s the only one I’ll ever want to play. Even though I’ve indulged in CS:GO a couple times this year, Battlefield is the one game that I keep coming back to, asking for more.
So it’s no surprise that battlefield is the only game I wanted when the PlayStation 4 came out. Though Multiplayer is really lacking with this game at first (and honestly, how can you even do multiplayer with this game.) It’s a welcome edition to the franchise.
This is the best Zelda game I’ve ever played so far. Honestly, the only reason why I’m saying that is because, for years I’ve had this feeling that the game just needed to be changed up for so long. Who would have thought that the change I was looking forward to, was for Nintendo to go Full Nostalgia on your ass. A Direct sequel to the Link to the Past, that fleshes out dat lore a little bit more, is something I’ve never known I needed.
Though it still plays the same that as always has, it manages to change up the gameplay in an exciting way. When it introduced the Mega Puzzles, suddenly solving them became 10 times more ambiguous, and with no fail state I would sit there for 30 minutes to an hour trying to figure it out.
I highly recommend this game to anyone. Love or hate the franchise, there’s something in it for all. Though I must confess that I look even more forward when they cross this game with Dynasty Warriors on the Wii U. That is probably going to be my ultimate guilty pleasure.
Full Disclosure: If you couldn’t follow along it’s because this is last minute and horribly written, but it's also because I’ve been playing waaaaay too much Picross this year. Infact the elaborate ruse was a way of saying that I've been playing Picross the most the year, and Mario's Picross + Picross e1, e2, and e3 are all together my one true game of the year.
what can I say, I REALLY like puzzle games.
Log in to comment