Hey guys! Remember that other list I made before you made all your lists? Well I made another one. I'd like you to see it.

GOTY 2012

My personal games of the year. As per usual, the optimal place to see this list is in the blog form, where any game marked with an asterisk (*) has additional commentary, and the ones that don't probably don't because I wrote something lengthy about them in the past and will no doubt have provided a link therein. This is probably not as exciting as my other list, but I bet this one will get more views.

	1. XCOM: Enemy Unknown Original Blog Simply put, Firaxis has managed to make a modern version of XCOM that stays true to the original whilst still being its own thing, a precarious balancing act that I applaud. Admittedly, I feel like the game became far too easy by the end on normal difficulty, something that was well made-up by how poorly my attempts at Classic Ironman have gone.
	2. Dishonored Original Blog (also for TWD) After I finished Dishonored, I immediately started another playthrough where instead of sneaking everywhere I murdered everyone and had just as much fun the second time. Say what I will about the underwhelming conclusion, the game's failure to use its setting to any real benefit, or the decidedly brief length it all takes place in, Dishonored is crazy fun and probably the best Deus Ex-type game since Deus Ex.
	3. The Walking Dead The fact that TWD got any sort of emotional reaction out of me is impressive, considering that I'm a robot with no feelings and the last game story that got any sort of major reaction out of me was Persona 3. Sure, the actual game parts are boring filler between the parts where you make horrible decisions and make people hate you, but I feel that the game is good enough with the pacing that it doesn't necessarily matter.
	4. Eador: Genesis As this is an ArbitraryWater list, it has to have at least one obscure game that you've probably never heard of, and if you have heard about it it's probably because I've been ranting about how good it is. Eador is that game. *
	5. Halo 4 It's more Halo. Surprise. It's more Halo. Having not played a significant amount of Halo since the 3rd one, I'm totally fine with that. *
	6. Borderlands 2 Borderlands 2 succeeds at being more Borderlands. This is fine. While the humor hits as much as it misses and I feel like Gearbox could have afforded to be more ambitious with its improvements, the core gameplay is still pretty fantastic.
	7. Dragon's Dogma Consider this to be somewhat preliminary, as I haven't finished it, but I've played enough Dragon's Dogma to tell you that it is a hella weird game that I'm pretty sure only someone like me could consider hella dope.*
	8. Hotline Miami Because indie games need representation too. Hotline Miami is the closest thing to an actual murder simulator, but it's also a puzzle game and kind of an action game? Either way, the soundtrack is probably the best thing.*
	9. Mass Effect 3 Original Blawg Looking at the rest of your lists, my opinion on Mass Effect 3 isn't quite as an aberration as my opinion on Dragon Age 2, which I fully admit is a not-good game that I happen to like. Mass Effect 3 happens to be a perfectly good game with a terrible, horrible, not very good ending that Bioware has since gone and attempted to retcon the hell out of. It's all a messy business and the reaction is similarly messy, but talking about any other part of that game I can tell you that Mass Effect 3 is still totally alright. Even the multiplayer is totally alright.
	10. FTL: Faster Than Light Because spaceship rougelikes are fun? The final boss is still totally BS though. Video Games.

Vidya games indeed. Now onto special categories and junk!

Honorable Mentions: Kingdoms of Amalur Reckoning, Diablo III and Civ V Gods and Kings

All 3 of these games were on my list at some point, but due to various circumstances (namely, me liking these other games more) they failed to make the cut. However, that being said, these games definitley deserve their props for being what they are. Amalur is interesting inasmuch as its combat and class system are concerned with some pretty great flexibility in how you want to approach the game, but the world is pretty dull and I could do without the whole "Single player MMO" thing it has going on. Admittedly, Dragon's Dogma does a lot of what I'm ragging on as well, but that game is... different somehow. In ways that I have yet to entirely comprehend. Regardless, I should probably play more of it because I think it is a preeeeeettyyy good game despite how much @Yummylee hates it with the burning fury of a thousand suns.

Speaking of burning fury, Diablo III was also totally good. While they apparently messed up the endgame (It certainly sounds that way) and told a dull, not especially exciting story that was as predictable as it was boring, they made another Diablo and (once again) I am pretty much ok with that. Loot is great, random people are ok, and being able to play with fellow bombers during the early days of launch was similarly fun. Of course, I only played through it on normal and then a bit of Nightmare, so I can only comment on it as someone who didn't necessarily see all that the game had to offer. Either way, it got the cut.

Gods and Kings fixes a lot of what I had against Civ V, most prominently how much I hated the AI in the base game, with their constant take take take only to get mortally offended any time I would so much as sneeze. It also adds a bunch of new civs that are cool, religion and espionage (which are kind of just additional screens, if anything). I guess the reason why it didn't make the list was because it still didn't motivate me to play a ton more Civilization V despite how much those small tweaks really did contribute towards me enjoying that game a lot more. Whatevs. You get the picture.

Dishonorable mention: Inquisitor

Hoo boy. Yes, technically Inquisitor came out in the Czech Republic in 2009, but it only came out in English this year, much like Eador, which as far as I am concerned is reason enough to give either a mention. However, whereas Eador is probably one of the single best fantasy turn based strategy games of the last 10 years, Inquisitor is basically a tribute to all that annoys me about old RPGs, a genre that you might have heard I think is preettttyy great. Maybe I'm being too hard on a low-budget Eastern European attempt at being a tribute to the classics, but while Inquisitor very much looks and plays like it would've come out 12 years ago, with such games as Baldur's Gate 2 and Icewind Dale, it does so rather poorly. The part where you play detective and read a bunch of text (one of the bragging features in the description is how big the script is. Most of it is redundant information) is alright, and I'm into the dark, dark dark tone even though I found the depicitons of torture to be... questionable. The part where it is a kind of terrible dungeon crawler in the vein of something like Diablo or maybe Divine Divinity however, is... really boring and more than a little bad. However, I obviously thought it was noteworthy enough to mention, and I'd really like to see if anyone else on these forums (i.e. not those crazies on the GOG boards) has a higher level of tolerance than me and would maybe be able to get something more out of it. Perhaps @Mento or @ahoodedfigure, since those are both people who like old RPGs and not necessarily good old RPGs. No, I'm not going to fund you. I'm just going to point to the part where it's half off until the 3rd. Also the soundtrack is preeetty good.

Best game that you had no idea existed: Eador Genesis

Do you like Heroes of Might and Magic? Age of Wonders? Disciples? Master of Magic? I can name specific aspects of Eador that are taken from all of those games, but because it only just came out on GOG this month and I was the one who made the wiki page for it, I somewhat doubt you've messed with it. You should. As kind of a mish-mash of all of your (or rather my) favorite fantasy turn based strategy games, I can overlook the part where it could easily be mistaken for something to come packed in with Windows '95 and definitely being made by Russians. What it lacks in grafix it makes up for in being totally awesome. I'd go into specifics, like how you can hybridize your heroes at level 10, or how I'm pretty sure starting with a warrior is a great opening move, but I feel like then we'd be here all day and you probably have other things to do, like buy gifts for family members you forgot you had, so I'll just say: buy it and see for yourself. If you like those kinds of games. But really, you probably should. Also, a sequel is coming out with actual graphics, if you're into that. Vote it up on Greenlight.

Best Halo: Halo 4

I could not tell you if I like Halo 4 more than Halo 3, the last game in the series I spent any sort of significant time with (but man did I spend some significant time with Halo 3) but I can tell you that 343 succeeded, for better or worse, at making a game that is comparable to Bungie's work. While I'm not much for how the story sets up what is basically the exact same plot as the other Halo games, the campaign is solid and doesn't overstay its welcome (also I would like to confirm that playing 4 player co-op on Legendary makes what would be a frustrating experience an enjoyable one). However, having played almost 20 hours of the multiplayer thus far, I can also confirm that I like the Halo 4 muliplayer, for whatever complaints there have been about loadouts changing the nature of the game to a more mid-ranged affair. Now I just need to see what ODST was all about. I think I'd like it?

Best open-world game with a strong combat element but not necessarily a great story: Dragon's Dogma

On the surface, Dragon's Dogma holds a lot of similarities to Amalur, thus the comparison I made earlier. The difference is that Dragon's Dogma is weird, and not weird in the way that something like Saints Row the Third is weird. It's half Dark Souls, half Monster Hunter with some Skyrim thrown in for good measure, but at the same time it can't be considered analogous to any of those games directly. I'm not entirely sure what makes this game tick for me, but it's clearly made to appeal to someone with my tastes. I'm not even bothered by the lack of Fast Travel, for the most part. I think the game would be better with it, certainly, but I also think the combat is strong enough to stand on its own. Much like Dark Souls, I'd like to see how this viewpoint holds out once I actually finish it (preferably over the break), but like Dark Souls I doubt my opinion will change very much. I really need to see the bananas ending that every review mentioned. I have to.

Best Soundtrack/Murder Simulator: Hotline Miami

I don't particularly think this needs any more embellishment.

And then I was like: nah, I don't need to write anything about FTL. I wish you all a Merry Christmas, or whatever particular holiday you celebrate (Secular excuse to hang out with family and buy presents?)

Best Games of 2012 (that didn't come out in 2012)

Ah, it's december, is it not? A time to reflect, a time to spend with family, and a time to wallow in self-loathing whilst studying for finals. It's also the time when people order games in a numerical fashion and declare them as having significant qualitative merit. For my part, I have always stood by this trend as something I do as well, but in order to prove to the world that I am cool and unique and different, as well as to give a nod to my old-game blogging practice, I also make a list of my top 10 games of the year... that didn't come out this year. As per usual, the criteria is that I hadn't played these games in years prior, because otherwise Heroes of Might and Magic III would be my game of the year every year. Or something. Either way, games marked with an asterisk (*) have additional commentary, and the ones that don't probably don't because I already wrote lengthy blogs about them.

	1. League of Legends Technically, while League of Legends was on my list last year, I spent far, far, far more time and far, far, far too much time with this game this year to not give it the top spot, for as occasionally regretful as it makes me.*
	2. Saints Row: The Third The number one purveyor of absurd, self-aware insanity wrapped up in what is also a totally competent open world action game. No other game released last year made me go: "The part where I am murdering people with a dildo as a naked cockney-accented gentleman is absurd!"*
	3. Dead Space 2 Isaac Clark's second adventure succeeds at being no worse than his first one, which is to say that the game starts and ends strongly despite some dragging around the middle. Really, if I had a complaint to levy, it would be that the plot is kind of terrible and Isaac doesn't need to talk because he's such a generic ActionBro that I don't even care*
	4. The Witcher Original Blog The Witcher is an unique beast of a RPG that combines great writing and storytelling with a well realized world... and also some kinda boring combat and it takes a few hours to really get up to speed. Either way, you should probably play it, and I should probably play the second one.
	5. Conker: Live & Reloaded Original Blog Rare's attempt at making a more scripted, linear platformer is incredibly successful from both a gameplay and a writing perspective, though the second is subjectively based on how funny you find poop and 11-year-old popular culture references.
	6. Suikoden III Original Blog A JRPG that succeeds not only at being a JRPG, but also a JRPG that I can play free of irony (as opposed to last year's surprise picking of Final Fantasy X-2). Suikoden III is the kind of game that I endorse with very few qualms other than the part where it's long and it takes a while for the combat to get hard.
	7. Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II The reason I like Dawn of War II, at least as far as the single-player campaign is concerned, mostly stems from the part where it is barely a RTS. SPAYCE MUHREENS! *
	8. Fire Emblem: Shin Monshou no Nazo - Hikari to Kage no Eiyuu It's more than a little tragic that this never came out in the US, considering how absurdly superior it is to the other DS Fire Emblem game, Shadow Dragon. Don't confuse that for thinking that this is necessarily a fantastic Fire Emblem game. Had I not put them on previous lists, Thracia 776 and Seisen no Keifu would have ranked very highly on this one. *
	9. Icewind Dale II Original Blog Probably my least favorite of the 5 games made with the Infinity Engine, but to say that IWD2 isn't a good game is much further than I am willing to go. Because it's a good game, with its multitude of character building options and varied combat encounters. Just not as good as the first one, or Baldur's Gate, or Baldur's Gate 2, or even maybe Planescape. That's right @snide, I said it. Icewind Dale II is no Icewind Dale, and it's certainly no Temple of Elemental Evil. I DARE YOU TO CHALLENGE THIS ASSERTION.
	10. Fortune Street I commend this game with very little irony, and while its length and lack of flash doesn't necessarily lend it to being a great party game, it's totally fantastic with the right group of people. Because it's like monopoly, but with a stock market and Mario.

Video games.

Now onto categorical awards!

Best games I would have put on this list had I not put them on previous lists:SNES Fire Emblem

Yo guys, Fire Emblem is pretty good. Thus, I'd like to tell you that the 4th and 5th installments of the franchise are also pretty good, and I actually finished them this year. You can find my write ups on them a few pages back for specifics, but if you like yourself some sadimasochistic turn based tactical action, there's still no better place to turn than the only Nintendo series I won't complain about being pretty much the exact same game every time. Ok, actually, XCOM is pretty good for that too, but I still like Fire Emblem better because it somehow seems less bullshit when I screw up. In any case, we'll talk more about XCOM once my other list gets finalized, and for that list to get finalized I would have to play some more Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning and some more Halo 4, both of which I've played enough to tell you I like, but not enough to feel comfortable giving full endorsements to.

Another game that I played: Shadows of the Damned

Shadows of the Damned is not a great game. Despite the whole part where it is Suda51 and therefore totally insane and kind of hilarious, the actual shooting is... pretty crummy, actually, and then there's the part where most of the tricks the game throws at you come in the first 90 minutes and are repeated ad-nauseum through the rest of the game. I could go on, about how it's basically a crummier version of Resident Evil 4 that can get you some easy achievements, or how there's a really bad turret sequence that lasts far, far, far too long, but it will suffice to say that I liked the game in spite of its flaws, but not enough for it to earn a place on the list. Worth a look if the idea of really dumb, juvenile humor and passable 3rd person shooting appeal to you.

Best GPA ruining experience/Old Game of the Year by default: League of Legends

If there's a hole in the games I've blogged about vs the games I've played an extensive amount of, there's probably no more obvious a discrepancy than that with League of Legends, which is easily the game I've played the most of this year and spoken very little about on these forums. I couldn't tell you why, other than that talking about the strategies required to be good to a person who hasn't played the game makes you sound like a lunatic, and I was probably busy... talking about The Witcher or something. The Witcher is pretty good. In any case, being that I was in a freshman dorm at the time, I was able to rope several other people into playing with me, including my roommate, and we thus created a 5 man team of death and destruction. Lemme tell you: playing that game with friends was some of the most fun I have ever had playing a video game. Ever. Being able to coordinate by just yelling at someone to stop being a stupid feeder instead of typing it is a pretty great experience, and the way the game flow works and the various abilities of all the champions are expertly designed. The obvious corollary to that is that playing with random people is inherently frustrating because they're unpredictable, often rude, and quite possibly capable of killing your entire team. Thus, when summer rolled around and we all went home, I played far less until I got a job, at which point I quit cold turkey because I had other stuff to play (namely Suikoden) and also it's difficult coordinating buddies when everyone is in a different time zone and junk. This has continued into the fall where I figured I may as well try to get a good GPA this semester, so I uninstalled it. Good grades didn't happen, but at least I can't blame it on me trying to perfect my strategies for jungling Sejuani (who is a great jungling champ, BTW). Maybe some day I'll go back, but tomorrow is not that day.

Best game that didn't result in me getting a lot of Cs in classes that I could've gotten a B in or something: Saints Row: the Third

At this point, I can understand Team Jeff's argument that Saints Row should've been Game of the Year last year. I would still probably pick Skyrim, if only because I feel that is probably a better game and the culmination of everything Bethesda learned from everything they made before. But I digress. Playing Saints Row this year was a great experience, because Saints Row is probably one of the funniest games I have ever played, with its weird, self-aware tone combined with all of the insanity that is present throughout. Burt Reynolds! That part where you are naked and on a bunch of drugs! The Ending! The Bad Ending! If there's a place where it falls apart, I think the side missions are kind of bad and I ignored most of them because (let's face it) the story is really the glue that binds the experience together. The shooting and driving are competent, but not especially noteworthy, and what I played of the DLC wasn't all that great either. Still, much like the ringing endorsement of the Giant Bomb crew, I must conclude that you should probably play Saints Row, and I'm really interested to see where the franchise goes next... assuming THQ even exists by then.

Best game to be pretty much the same as its predecessor, but that still being entirely ok: Dead Space 2

Dead Space 2 is not a risk-taker. It sticks to what worked in the last game, which is to say that you fight horrible monsters by shooting off their various limbs, and at some points they will jump out of ducts and you will flinch a little. To be fair, it is a somewhat faster moving game and I really like the harpoon gun's alternate fire of ELECTROCUTION DOOM. Does the flamethrower still suck? Yes. Does the assault rifle still suck? No. Which is great. Does their attempt at making a more involved story suck? Yeah. They really didn't need to make Isaac talk, and the flow of the story is still "YO ISAAC GO HERE OH NOES THERE IS SOMETHING IN YOUR WAY SO YOU HAVE TO GO HERE TO GO THERE". I'm willing to excuse it, however, if only because I think the game is dope and because Dead Space 3 is kind of bumming me and hopefully that will change once it comes out.

Best RTS that is barely a RTS: Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War II

This is a pretty late addition to this list, considering that I only finished Dawn of War II's original campaign yesterday. Thus, I can't say to have played any multiplayer, I've only done the first mission of Chaos Rising, and I haven't even thought about touching Retribution yet. But basically, Dawn of War II's single-player is a more tactical, micromanagement heavy version of Diablo. While I like Diablo, or at least I used to like Diablo (you will not be seeing Diablo III in my other list, except as an extraneous mention), I wouldn't mind a bit of Baldur's Gate esque tactical managment on the side, which is exactly what this game delivers. Have your heavy guys suppress your enemies and then have your rocketjump melee guys rocket jump in to finish them off? Yes. That is fun and enjoyable. My qualms mostly relate to every map ending in a boss battle of some kind, along with the part where you tend to see a lot of the maps repeat, things that are apparently addressed in the expansion. If someone wants to play Chaos Rising or Retribution Co-Op, or maybe that survival mode, I am very much willing to do so. Also I hear the multiplayer is good, but I doubt anyone is playing it at this point.

Best Fire Emblem game that I didn't put on another list: New Mystery of the Emblem

Fire Emblem Shin Monshou no Nazo recently got itself a translation patch, something that I haven't tried out yet because I played the game sans translation, in Japanese. This was during the beginning of summer, when I was kind of bored and in need of a strategy RPG fix as fast as possible. The game follows the continuing adventures of Prince Marth as he continues to be sort of bland and uninteresting, but with the added twist that everyone actually has good stats so using that class change mechanic actually makes sense, as opposed to how utterly useless it was in Shadow Dragon for all but a few units. I know enough of the story from the SNES original to tell you that it's still pretty simple and basic (although the addition of support conversations is not to be forgotten), but on a mechanical level it's a much more interesting (and difficult) game. Still a DS Fire Emblem, so it's still kind of ugly, but at least the new one is coming out in February. Oh wait. I don't have a 3DS. Crap.

And thus ends half of my Game of the Year junk for this year. You can expect my next list sometime next week. Have fun?

Hey there guys. Let’s sit down for a while, maybe have a chat about the video games. Thankfully, my haul from the Steam thanksgiving sale was decidedly low-impact, or at least as low impact as one can do when they’re purchasing stuff from steam because “shiny”. In this case, I got The Walking Dead, KotOR 2 (you know, just in case I ever need to trash that game again), and Dishonored, two of which happen to be the main subjects of this blog.I also bought the PC version of Dark Souls from Amazon for $15, and then won a copy of Gauntlet Dark Legacy from Ebay in a moment of nostalgia/poor judgment. Also I paid for the THQ humble bundle and gave it all to charity, which is to say that I gave it all to THQ. While I’m usually not one for RTS games that came out after 2002, I find that Relic’s more tactical affairs are the exception to the rule, and considering how awesome I think Dawn of War II is (I should really finish that, shouldn’t I?) I bet that Company of Heroes is in a similar vein, and I’ve wanted to play Darksiders for a while. (Metro 2033 and Red Faction are icing, if anything). See? I play modern games too, on occasion.

Modern Games 2: On Occasion

The Walking Dead is barely a video game, and yet it is one of the best narrative experiences I have had in a long time. While the first episode does make a somewhat half-hearted attempt to be like the rest of Telltale’s ilk (Man, I should really play more Sam and Max), any pretense of TWD’s “gameplay” being anything other than filler between the amazing writing and dialogue is in full effect by the second episode. And know what? That’s fine. The Walking Dead is less about “Use Axe on Zombie” then it is about making terrible, horrible choices that inevitably lead to people hating you or dying. Not since I finished up The Witcher (I should probably finish The Witcher 2) have I made a choice I immediately regretted after seeing the outcome. While the story itself is, for all intents and purposes, pretty much the same regardless of how you choose, the way the choices are presented and referenced give a strong illusion that what you’re doing has weight, though I still think The Witcher has it beat in the “actual gameplay consequences” area. But whereas The Witcher had an ok, if overly padded RPG underneath its great writing, the brisk pace of TWD and the extreme shortness of the gameplay segments that don’t involve you mashing buttons means that it’s being great (and by great I mean emotionally draining and unremittingly depressing) almost all of the time. I almost feel like I can’t talk specifics because it’s the kind of experience that would probably be cheapened if you knew anything about the story going in and in a surprising deviation from my spoiler-happy internet viewing, I went into it without much foreknowledge of what was going to happen and I think that really made it for me. All you need to know is that Lee is a great character despite just being a proxy for the player, and Clementine is a rare example of a child character being written in a way that comes off as realistic. If I have any sort of qualms that aren’t philosophical in nature, they’re probably directed towards some of the supporting characters, namely the ones featured in Episode 4, but if I elaborated it’d probably go into nitpicky territory, and we don’t want that. Thus, I end with my ringing endorsement (it’s going to be high up on my GOTY list for sure), and suggest that if you are not a cold, emotionless robot like me, maybe you shouldn’t play through multiple episodes in one sitting. Considering that this game got any sort of emotional reaction out of me at all suggests that normal people will not take well to the awful happenings therein.

Dishonored is the best Deus Ex game since the last Deus Ex game. Considering that Arkane Studios Austin is apparently brimming with Ion Storm alumni, this is not a surprise. What was a surprise is that I liked Dishonored more than Deus Ex: Human Revolution, a game that I like a lot despite its occasional hiccups (mostly stemming from the part where there were totally stupid and pointless boss battles in direct contradiction to what the rest of the game was trying to do), and perhaps even more than the first Deus Ex. But perhaps I’m overselling this comparison a bit. Yes, Dishonored is one of those games where you can approach a situation from whatever angle you see fit, be it stabbing dudes in the face and neck or sneaking around every single one of them and not killing a single person (an attempt I made on my initial playthrough, foiled by someone I must have accidentally killed at some point), but it’s certainly its own game and while if you like Deus Ex, you’ll probably like this game, even if you didn’t you possibly may like this game as well. Where it differentiates itself is partially aesthetic in how steampunk it is with its whale-oil powered machinery and Victorian costuming (also, you can tell that Dunwall was designed by the guy who designed City 17), but it’s mostly in the way that traversal is handed. Corvo’s ability to blink teleport from the first non-tutorial mission onward gives a pretty clear message that you won’t be needing to play “find the vent” nearly as much as that other one. With that teleporting magic, the incredibly useful Dark Vision, and maybe some Possession and some Time Stop, I found that I was not only enjoying my attempt at a no detection/no kills playthrough, but actually succeeding (though I didn’t get the achievements for some reason, which is fine by me since the game is short enough that doing something like that again wouldn’t be too time consuming). Unsurprisingly, being able to silently teleport both vertically and horizontally makes slipping past or behind guards (so you can choke them out and throw their unconscious bodies in a pile) far easier than in some other games, where I feel like most enemies have an almost preternatural sense of being able to detect you from far too far away. Of course, having gone through half of the game again, but with the intent of killing everyone I encounter, I can confirm that the more direct route is also not very challenging, at least on Normal difficulty. Either way, Dishonored is an enjoyable time.

But, it’s also a short time. I beat the game in around 6 hours, in which some save scumming and some pretty extensive exploration was done in my vain quest to not be detected or kill dudes (I also replayed some missions a few times because I accidentally killed some people). That’s actually fine and dandy, considering that there is something to be said about a game that exercises brevity and doesn’t overstay its welcome. It’s also worth multiple playthroughs if you want all the achievements, a task I am very much considering. You’ll notice that I haven’t mentioned the story at all. This is intentional. While Dishonored is very much a game that succeeds by being mechanically sound and exceptionally polished on the gameplay front, I can’t say the same for the story. This is partially because, for as much world-building can be found in whatever scattered books you find laying around, the fiction that is built up is never truly capitalized on as well as it could be. Thus you are left with a tale of “kill the people who betrayed you, but then there is a twist”. Twist: The people who you were working for betray you for ill-explained reasons. I didn’t find any of the main characters particularly interesting, and the side characters who seem interesting are just side characters. All of this leads to a surprisingly flaccid, underwhelming conclusion ending with one of two voiceover narrations depending on how many dudes you iced throughout the course of the game. It should be stated that while it can’t compete with the likes of Mass Effect 3 or Assassin’s Creed 3 in pure disappointment, the ending to Dishonored is pretty terrible and unsatisfying. If I had to nitpick something about the gameplay, I’d probably say that it’s a bummer that most of your items and some of your powers aren’t useful if you’re trying to go the nonlethal route, but that’s probably intentional. Qualms about the narrative aside, Dishonored is probably also going to be pretty high up on my GOTY list, and I also suggest you purchase it for a monetary sum. It’s also led to me taking another look at Arx Fatalis and keeping an eye out for the eventual occasion when Dark Messiah of Might and Magic will be on sale. As a nifty bonus, it totally ran at a smooth 60fps the entire way through with most of the settings turned up pretty high. While that’s probably more the part where Dishonored’s visuals rely more on art design than technical prowess, it was still a pleasant surprise, especially since Dark Souls wants to run at like 20 FPS the entire time despite the part where my computer far exceeds the recommended requirements. Stupid unoptimized PC ports.

Oh right. I guess I should probably talk about the rest of those interplay games, now that I’m almost done with all 8 of them.

Interplay Junk, I guess if you’re still reading this far.

Jagged Alliance 2: Unfinished Business is a standalone expansion to Jagged Alliance 2, which is to say that it’s a game I like on a conceptual level but actively fail on an executional one. I’m not entirely sure what doesn’t click with me, or what I’m doing wrong that ends with me getting half my guys killed on any given encounter, but I bet it’s probably the best game of the 8 Interplay titles that were part of that bottom tier in the “Pay what you want” promo. So that’s cool, I guess?

M.A.X. is a turn based strategy game that seems kinda like what would happen if the original C&C was a TBS. No, it’s not full of amazing FMV, as far as I can tell, but it does have a near future setting and base building and junk. It seems nifty, and may be the first game in this set of 8 that I won’t immediately uninstall. I did get wrecked by the computer on the tutorial mission though, so we’ll see one way or another. Sadly, M.A.X. 2 doesn't seem to work on my computer.

There’s one Interplay game from that promo left, but I’ll keep it a surprise (also I haven’t played it yet). Instead, I’ll just say that if you tell me your favorite method for playing the Deus Ex-like games of the world, I may send you a GOG code for the game in question, because I already owned it. Have fun?

Hey guys. In the interim between this blog and the last, I’ve played some video games, done some homework, had a birthday, voted, and suffered rejection at the cruel hands of a woman. Truly a large variety of things. Thankfully for you, I will be focusing pretty much entirely on the first one, since the internet is probably the worst place to talk about your personal life and that’s what Facebook is for anyways. So, right. Video Games. This is ostensibly still about the other 7 Interplay Games, right? But really, let’s not kid ourselves. That’s just the excuse. Of course, Interplay’s entire catalogue was 50% off recently, ensuring that anyone who paid $35 for that full bundle feels like a sucker. It’s not hard to figure out what games to pick: Fallout, Fallout 2, Fallout Tactics and Freespace 2. Done. No more Interplay games needed. And I don’t even like Fallout 2 that much.

Oh right, other games

I finished Heroes of Might and Magic IV: The Gathering Storm, for the 3 of you interested in my completion of a middling expansion to a sequel with a mixed reputation for a franchise that has fallen from grace in the eyes of its fanbase. But Might and Magic fans are crazy. Not as crazy as Fire Emblem fans, but far more bitter and far less likely to be fluent in English. Heroes V and Heroes VI are a-ok, whatever they might think. Oh right. The Gathering Storm. The last campaign is suitably insane, having your 5 ultra-powerful heroes with powerful artifacts go against large numbers of powerful enemies. It also reveals how totally broken heroes are at higher levels. What's that? You're throwing hundreds of Goblin Knights at me, who are durable as hell and resistant to magic? Too bad the archmage character's artifact set totally allows him to ignore magic resist, which means he probably casts Hypnosis or similarly broken spell (seriously, Hypnosis is the most broken, and was ultimately the spell I used in order to win the absurd final battle where the odds are clearly stacked against you in large fashion). Oh well. Still enjoyable, if not necessarily recommendable. Maybe I’ll try The Winds of War next, since that is less about broken heroes and a bit more about “strategy”. But really, thanks to the proverbial stupidity of Heroes IV's AI at times, it's more about exploitation than actual countermeasures. I bet Heroes IV would be a pretty rad multiplayer game.

I also played through Resident Evil Code Veronica again over the weekend, mostly because the alternative was thinking about playing Silent Hill 2, and while SH2 succeeds at making me very uncomfortable, it kind of blows as a game. For whatever gripes I have with Code Veronica (and there are many), it’s still a perfectly competent Resident Evil game and is usually totally fine. Silent Hill 2 is all about fog and obnoxious riddles, two things that I’m less than keen on. Thus, because I only have my PS2 with me I had to make due with my least favorite game in the series (at least until I play 6). Unsurprisingly, my opinion has not changed much in the last 3 years since I played the game last. Code Veronica still does a lot of smart things with the way the camera is handled, how the map shows you items you haven’t picked up and how you enemies don’t really have invincibility frames (allowing you to dump with impunity). It squanders this by being crazy long (the par time for the Rocket Launcher is under 4 ½ hours), surprisingly difficult at times, and in general being the clear jumping off point for the series from more puzzle-focused adventure type stuff to third person shooting. Also you don’t really ever have to manage your inventory because both characters get side-packs that give you 10 inventory slots. On the plus side, it’s still totally cool that the knife isn’t complete garbage and can be used as something other than a weapon of last resort. Not that it matters much, as while Claire can genuinely be screwed over in the ammo department if you used a few too many grenade rounds, Chris has enough ammunition to kill every enemy he encounters, especially if you leave Claire’s weapons in the item box when you switch characters. And you will want to do that because the shotgun kind of blows in this game. Also I wrote a list where I rank the old RE games in a numerical order. You should read it?

Probably Interplay

Shattered Steel is a name that you know for one reason and one reason only: it was Bioware’s first game. Having played…. 4 missions, I can confirm that your lack of knowing or caring about the game that they made before Baldur’s Gate is justified. Admittedly, my knowledge of mech games is not expansive, but as far as I can tell, Shattered Steel is… a totally ok mech game. You have lasers. You can equip your mech with different weapons. You can turn your head independently of your legs. The hitboxes for enemies seem kinda messed up. I dunno. Seems rather simplistic, considering when I see a mech game I expect at least 30 different meters telling me the temperature of the right gun barrel. So thus, my conclusion is… inconclusive? I dunno. It fits with my assumption that most of the games in that bottom tier are boring, rather than out and out garbage the same way Kingdom: The Far Realms was. But, to be fair, that game was at least entertaining in how not good it was.

VR Soccer 96 is a soccer game and I have no idea if it would be considered good or not. I can tell you that it was the lowest-selling game on GOG until that promotion, and probably will continue to be an unfortunate stain in my GOG library. Also, it doesn't have a page on this site. Moving on.

Screamer is an “arcade style” “racing game” that is perhaps only novel if you have never played a mid-late 90s arcade style racing game in your life, and I imagine it’s comparable to the Ridge Racer games of that era. Personally, I just found it to be kinda boring, with the unfortunate exception being the announcer, who is both obnoxious and never shuts up in that 90s “In yo face attitude” kind of way. Why is this a game that anyone would buy again? Oh right. Because I paid a dollar for it.

And thus ends yet another excursion into the darkness of Interplay’s catalog and thus allows me to uninstall a few more Interplay games from my computer, never to return. Silent Storm is 60% off on GOG this weekend, and personally I think that game seems pretty cool, as opposed to most of these games.

In "commemoration" of GOG's ended "Pay what you want" promo for Interplay's entire catalog on the service, I have decided to blog about every game. Actually, no. That would be stupid, because if there's anything to be learned from that promo, it is that Interplay's catalog is pretty awful at this point and the desiccated husk of a company has been sustaining itself off the original Fallout for far too long. Instead, I will probably blog about the eight games at the bottom tier, the tier that I shamelessly paid a dollar for (if you want the good stuff, you're going to have to pay $35), though I will not guarantee a full blog on each (Hey, I bet that Jagged Alliance 2 Unfinished Business plays a lot like Jagged Alliance 2). But before I regale you with tales of a crummy Dragon's Lair wannabe, let's talk for a bit, shall we?

Musings

I finished Borderlands 2. I stand by my (and everyone else’s) statement that it’s basically a better version of the first game, no more and no less. However, as someone who never actually finished the first game (I’m probably pretty close. I bet I could knock it out in a weekend if I felt so inclined) that was enough to tip the scales in my favor. A better sense of pacing contributes to this, as does smarter designed skill trees and more distinguished weapon design. I feel most of the attempts at dramatic storytelling fell flat, and the attempts at humor were decidedly mixed, but the part where I had an automatic sniper rifle that does corrosive damage with 22 bullets in the clip was A-OK. However, I’m not sure if I am going to play anymore, at least for a while. Much like Diablo III, my tolerance level for this kind of stuff isn’t quite enough for me to play through it again to get to max level. Maybe once some more DLC is released, or maybe if I can get some people to consistently play with me.

Whilst home for the weekend, I decided to mess around with some of the games I had left there. While me playing an hour of Dark Souls isn't particularly interesting, I did decide to pop in Resident Evil 2 for a spin and was surprised to see a Leon A save file that had reached the sewers. I then proceeded to finish it with a final time of less than 2 hours. (unlocking the Rocket Launcher in the process). This, if nothing else, prompted me to remember that Resident Evil 2 is hella short and also hella easy. The game practically throws ammo at you (something that I remember getting worse in Resident Evil 3), and Leon can murder pretty much anything with his upgraded shotgun or magnum. I’m not sure if there’s a point to that story, other than “Resident Evil 2 is pretty short and it kind of sucks that you can ignore a lot of the stuff in that last area”

I’ve also been playing a lot of Heroes of Might and Magic IV, specifically the set of campaigns from the Gathering Storm expansion, and I still stand by that one time I wrote that Heroes IV is pretty good and somewhat underrated. That’s not to say it doesn’t have problems, problems showcased even more by this expansion, but eh. Perhaps the most prevalent one is how you can solo maps with the right type of hero, especially if they have Nature or Chaos magic (creature summoning or direct damage). You don’t need to recruit guys if you can have an army of unicorns or fairy dragons in a few turns, and similarly one of the campaign heroes straight up gets grandmaster stealth in her first map (she also has nature magic) allowing her to run around maps alone with impunity and basically breaking the difficulty presented. While I haven’t played the original campaigns in quite some time, I remember them having a lot of writing as well as scripted events, things that seem conspicuously absent in these ones. I guess 3DO’s dire financial straits didn’t really allow New World Computing to do more than they had to.

But let’s talk about bad games. Like this one.

Kingdom: The Far Reaches

Oh boy. I really started with the showstopper. While most the other 7 games in that bottom tier of interplay seem to range between “bad” and “not especially great” (I imagine Jagged Alliance 2: Unfinished Business is the exception, but I really never enjoyed JA2, so I probably won’t write about it), Kingdom: The Far Reaches should barely be called a game. The first warning sign is that it’s actually a port of an arcade game called Thayer’s Quest (released in like the 80s), which was basically Dragon’s Lair with the concepts of that applied to a crappy adventure game. The second is that, in addition to DOS, it was also ported to the CD-I and the 3DO. Kingdom falls into the realm of “So bad it’s ironically enjoyable” . The animation is bad, the voice acting is bad and the game itself can obviously be completed in a few minutes. There’s also a lot of insta-death, somewhat but not really alleviated by you having 3 lives that falls in line with the part where it was originally an arcade game that was meant to be unfair ‘n junk. Thus, if you were to guess that most of the puzzle solutions are total BS, you’d be right! I don’t even know what to say. . I dunno. The idea that anyone would pay money for this is both sad and hilarious, and I suggest you don’t do so. Unless you already bought that interplay pack, at which point go for it. Just watch this death compilation, which is from the arcade version and thus has better video quality.

Well, that may have been the first blog where my preamble was longer than what I theoretically was writing about. Whatever.

Oh hey there. I write about video games sometime. Not yesterday. Yesterday I was at a funeral.

Video Games

Borderlands 2 is pretty great. Have I said that before? I must admit, rather guiltily, that I never finished the first one because I got bored of it. That has yet to happen with Borderlands 2, and that probably comes down to tighter pacing and enemies that aren’t totally dumb. You aren’t going to get a full blog about it, but it’s a cool enough game that I will most certainly finish it, since I’m also like 17 hours in… which means I’ve probably played more Borderlands 2 than XCOM. Huh. The humor is super hit and miss for me, with some of it being pretty cringe-inducing. Oddly enough, the use of the term "Bonerfart" was not one of those moments.

I decided against writing a whole blog about the bizarre Russian mod for Heroes of Might and Magic III that just straight up adds another town, mostly because I’m pretty sure that’s all that it adds at the moment (with another two towns on the way at some point in the next decade and maybe some other things), though I’m not quite sure because I can’t read Russian. Thus, if I am going to write anything about it, you can be assured it will also include me talking smack about the other batshit insane Russian mod for Heroes of Might and Magic III (thus proving that Russians are crazy): In the Wake of the Gods. Because man. I would have field day writing about that.

With Icewind Dale II no longer my RPG white whale, I’ve decided that World of Xeen fits that role quite nicely. It is my intent to finish it before the end of the year, but let’s be realistic. Have I ever told you that, much like the rest of Might and Magic, World of Xeen is pretty awesome? Because it is. It’s surprisingly accessible for an RPG of that era and doesn’t bludgeon you over the head with difficulty the same way Wizardry VII does. Other candidates include the unfortunate “I’m still playing and planning on finishing it even though it is clearly not a good game” Might and Magic IX, Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne, Legend of Grimrock and The Witcher 2, though a few hours of play probably isn’t enough for it to earn “White Whale” status yet. It certainly gave off a good first impression and I want to play more. That game is probably the most intimidating of all of these though. It's clearly as dense, if not moreso than the first game. Just be assured that Inquisitor is not and will never be on this list. Because eff that game. Yes, I'd rather play Might and Magic IX than a game that is only getting the attention it is from enthusiasts because it exists, and not because it's any good.

EDIT: Oh right. This looks balls crazy. 17 years? What. That's more than Duke Nukem. It also looks way better than Duke Nukem. I am not endorsing throwing money at this project (I haven't and will not, at least for a while), but I am endorsing looking at that insane pitch video.

But enough about that, onto the aliens!

The Aliens

It’s fair to say that I was a pretty vocal advocate of the original XCOM when I played it for the first time two years ago. Since then, I’ve messed with other, similar games (including the “Holy shit this game is hard” stylings of Terror from the Deep, and the “This is actually not very good” stylings of the UFO franchise.) and it remains pretty clear that UFO Defense is the best, despite being an old game with a horrifically inefficient UI and some major balance issues. I think my opinion on it has lessened somewhat in the interim (whereas I can tell you with a straight face that Wizardry 8 is still totally rad and awesome and such). There are certain aspects of it that aren’t so much entertaining as they are tedious or frustrating, though I still probably consider it one of my favorite games of all time (as the near 50 hours I have logged onto steam can attest), just maybe… less so than when I wrote about it at that time. Thus, you can imagine I was decidedly pumped for this new one. And you would be right. Thus, you cannot imagine how I felt when I realized that the game is complete and total garbage. Ha! Just kidding. It’s awesome, as many of you can attest. Thus, to avoid redundant information, I am going to assume that you know most of the details about this game and focus on what I think about all of it. Because I want to. And because you want me to?

If there is something that needs to be spoken on the outset, it’s that Enemy Unknown does a frighteningly good job of being a lot like the first game, for as much as is different. I am of the opinion that most of these changes were justified, inasmuch as they’re making a game in 2012 is concerned. Class designations are great, as it forces soldiers into individual roles rather than the army of psychic flying heavy-plasma-wielding monsters that the end game of the original eventually turned into. It’s still raw in a way I can get behind, with your soldiers being incredibly vulnerable, especially at the beginning. The controls for mouse and keyboard are fine, though clearly still optimized with a controller as priority. The gameplay still rewards patience, reaction shots still always miss when you don’t want them to and Chrysalids are still total jerks. The base is probably one of the less enthralling changes, though I understand why it was made, even if the result is a less important geoscape and far less UFO shooting down. It’s a different enough game to be its own thing, which is good. Xenonauts, for as cool as it looks, has yet to convince me that it isn’t just taking every single page from the playbook of UFO Defense, though obviously I will find out for myself soon enough.

With that being said, I have no clue where Ryan Davis is coming from when he says on the Bombcast that Normal difficulty is crazy hard (other than the obvious: he’s bad at strategy games). I’d go as far as to say it becomes a bit too easy by the end, even with Elite Mutons, Sectopods and Ethereals messing you up. The final mission in particular is noteworthy for being simultaneously underwhelming and hilariously easy. Keep in mind that I am referencing Normal here. I’ve started messing with Classic, and the jump in difficulty is… significant, to the point where I feel like it actually succeeds in being the sadistic monster the developers claimed it would be. Obviously I will have to play more at some point, but my academic situation is such that I can’t really afford to spend much time with games until I get things sorted out. Wait, why did I spend time writing this again? Oh yeah. Easier than homework. Crap. Theoretically you can also expect a bit less of a presence on the forums from me, for aforementioned reasons.

XCOM is pretty great, and Firaxis is probably the best developer it could have had. For all my praises though, I feel like I burnt out on it playing the way I did (I beat it on Thursday, which is to say that I beat it after about 2 days of not doing much else. ) and classic is intimidating enough that another look will not be for a while. It's a fantastic game, though I would be hard-pressed to say if it is better than the original. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some spreadsheets to spreadsheet!

Here I was, randomly looking up the high resolution mod for Heroes of Might and Magic III when I found out that batshit crazy russian mod that was in development forever had been released. No, not WOG. That's the other batshit crazy russian mod. I'm talking about this:

As such, you can expect my impressions on it within the week. No, it's not in english yet, but that's not going to stop me.

OR: I play new games that look like old games to the point where it's a bit unsettling how old the new game looks.

Hey guys. Remember that one time I was like “CRPGs are pretty good maaaannnn” at which point I probably told you about Icewind Dale or Planescape or whatever? Well this is the part where I do the opposite and tell you that CRPGs can be bad as well. Because it's true! Rarely do my blogs ever skew towards the negative. This is mostly because if I'm playing something bad, I feel no ill-conceived obligation to continue playing it. I'm not being paid to do this, I'm doing this because I enjoy it, so it takes a particular kind of bad game to catch my interest enough to write about it instead of just make snide allusions from time to time or perhaps post this video for the 50 time. Because I still find that video hilarious and love that it is just randomly included as an extra on GOG. (Speaking of GOG, they're doing their annual survey and if you fill it out you get Realms of Arkania 1+2 for free. While both of those games seem like crusty relics, I bet they'd be pretty decent if enough time was invested therein. You know. Cuz German D&D. If you're too lazy, I could probably just gift you the copy I will theoretically obtain, but considering how hard it was to sell people on a game I know is good (Age of Wonders) or a game that I'm pretty sure is good (Vampire the Masquerade), we will have to see. Oh right. That vampire game. Still in my steam library, BTW.

Inquisitor, or at least the first act of Inquisitor, (Should probably get out there that this is an impressions blog ) is that thing I like, done poorly. It's Deus Ex Invisible War, or maybe that bootleg 360 controller I got off ebay. Ok. That's a bit harsh. It lacks the sheer wide-scale ineptitude of Invisible War and it's not a barely-functional cheap piece of garbage like that controller. What it is, however, is mediocre in pretty much every aspect of its execution. But perhaps I should back up. Inquisitor is a CRPG developed by Czech people that was released 3 years ago in Czechland, and is only now coming to the west. Before that, however, it was apparently in development for 9 years. Which makes perfect sense because the game looks, sounds and feels like it should have come out in 2000 next to the likes of Icewind Dale, Diablo II and Baldur's Gate 2. Except it is none of those games. The closest comparison I could make is probably Divine Divinity, with its Diablo-esque elements (color coded loot) but more traditional RPG quest and environment structure. You play the role of a Priest, Paladin or Thief (actually a member of the nobility who has fallen on hard times, but he picks locks and shoots a bow, so he fits the mold) and wage holy war against the servants of Satan through dialogue and murder. Oh, and did I mention that you work for the Inquisition of a church that is totally not the Roman Catholic Church and thus do inquistor-type things like torture and burning people at the stake? Yep. You do. I find that particular aspect of the subject matter a bit disconcerting, considering that the real inquisition was a pretty awful thing and torture is also a pretty awful thing. But I guess it's ok because the people you are torturing and burning are actual devil-worshipers? Oh, did I mention that you HAVE to torture to progress the game and it isn't some moral choice or whatever?

Interestingly enough, the Inquisitor-y parts of the game that are actually the ones that show promise. You basically play the role of detective and go around asking the citizens of the town for information. It's not unlike Planescape or The Witcher, if Planescape or The Witcher had an occasionally wonky translation and most of the much vaunted 1.5 Million word script was because each citizen gave mostly redundant information and could be asked every single question you had available. So basically, it's the game of “Talk to everyone about everything until you can progress”, which is a game that I like... provided that the script is good. The script is decent, but it's not either of the aforementioned games, and there isn't quite enough talking to balance it out.

That leaves the other part of the game, namely the “killing things” part. And this is the part where Inquisitor seems to falter. The combat is bad, poorly balanced, and generally quite boring. You spend most of your time chipping away at enemies with far too much health while your party members drink your potions like they were water and eventually something dies. It's not Diablo, so you aren't getting sweet loot every 5 minutes (more like every 30 minutes), and there are most certainly wrong and right choices to be made when skills are concerned. The levitate spell seems almost crucial, as it allows you to float over lava and acid and whatnot without taking damage, but offensive magic seems to be a questionable investment unless you pump all of your points into intelligence and the various magic schools as to overcome enemy magic resistance (which in turn makes me think that playing the priest is not a great choice). Also, the first real dungeon that I encountered was 6 floors deep, and culmanated in an ultra-cheap boss fight where actual victory seems out of grasp... at least until I realized that you could summon djinn who are more than capable of wrecking everything. They're basically a nuke, and the only downside is that they don't follow you (which leads to me kiting enemies towards them) and you get no XP for their kills (negligible). Also expensive, but you get cash out the wazoo and all you're going to buy is potions anyways, or at least that's all I bought. Obviously, not a permanent solution, but an acceptable one considering the general mediocrity of the combat at hand. Without it, I imagine you're supposed to grind or something? That thought disgusts me a bit, actually.

I'm not going to tell you to not play Inquisitor. While I think that a lot of the praise it is getting on the internetsphere is mostly out of appreciation that a game like this came out in 2012 (along with the sheer desperation for something, anything to come out), I think there are aspects and ideas of it that have merit, for as much as that merit is buried under dubious mechanics and the part where you burn people at the stake. If you want a good example of how to make a game like this and have it come out in 2012, look at Spiderweb Software's catalog. I can personally vouch for Avernum: Escape from the Pit, and considering all of the games made by that studio (of 3 people) look the exact same, I bet the rest are similarly solid. Of course, even disregarding those there are dozens of games more cohesive and with far less baggage that came out a dozen years ago and probably have been patched and modded into pristine perfection. The conclusion to all of this that I totally broke the quest to promote my thief to a higher rank of nobility (each character class has their own quest like this with unique benefits for each one, something that I would most certainly miss if ignored) and thus cannot complete it, nor can I cheat my way through it since there isn't a list of console commands for me to do so, which is a further damper on me wanting to play anymore (I probably will because I hate myself, but I'd really rather play The Witcher 2 or even Might and Magic IX for heaven's sake) Just remember: this game was made in Eastern Europe. Also don't forget 9/11. Because if you do, the terrorists win.

Oh hello there. I've actually managed to finish Icewind Dale II, a game that I've been talking about for at least the last century, during the first week of school before it actually gets hectic and difficult. Hopefully the mistakes of the past (namely getting my roommate and several other guys in my dorm addicted to League of Legends) will not be repeated and I can theoretically aim to succeed in my work rather than barely avoiding academic probation. But enough about my hopes and dreams, let's talk about 10 year old CRPGs. And of course, other things! Because I occasionally do other things! Really!

Other things?

I watched Full Metal Panic. Even despite my limited exposure to Anime in general, I could tell you that I didn't think it was especially great, or rather that the majority of it is especially great. The parts where it is a serious mecha are... kinda dull. The parts where it is a wacky anime high school comedy with hilarious antics? Far better, though the ratio is such that it's only around 25% of the show. The spinoff, Full Metal Panic Fumoffu, addresses this problem by making that show nothing but hilarious wacky anime high school antics and is thus a much more entertaining show by far. It's also where @MattyFTM's ball-faced avatar comes from. Glad I know that now. Sadly, the second spinoff (which is actually a sequel and apparently much better than the base show, once again) is not on the Netflix, though I'm sure I could find it if I bothered to look. Kinda like how I never finished the second series of Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex, but probably could if I typed something into Google. (Spoilers: The reason I didn't get around to finishing it is because it wasn't as good as the first series, at least as far as I watched) But enough talk about that. This isn't Anime Vice, though if it was I'd wonder what I was doing there.

Tactics Ogre continues to be pretty good. What that game does to endear itself to me when Final Fantasy Tactics hasn't is up to debate. It's not a significantly different game, as FFT is basically a sequel with more The localization is pretty great in the way it occasionally descends into purple-prose levels of fancy-lad englishe and also the way the plot decides to avoid cliché (I haven't played the SNES original, but if it was anything like this remake that is an accomplishment for sure), though apparently a lot of it is entirely different depending on which route you take (I am taking the Law Route). I would say that the game isn't grindy, because to some extent it isn't (as characters and classes gain experience and skill points just by fielding them), but that isn't entirely true since I've gotten to the point where I've started recruiting story characters with unique classes and better stats than the generics I've been rolling with for most of the game. These characters are clearly worth using, so I now am in the situation of having to grind them up to the rest of my party, which is thankfully pretty painless since I can have them stand in the corner and generally not die while everyone does the heavy lifting (Canopus is probably the single best unit in the game. Still.) Maybe I'll write something, maybe I won't. Either way, it's a nice reminder that the PSP is a pretty great system if you like those kinds of games.

Because it's on sale this weekend, I have two GOG copies of Age of Wonders just laying around the virtual internetspace. If you want one (and I assume you'll at the very least want it more than you'll want Vampire the Masquerade you filthy ingrate), tell me your favorite D&D class and why. Bonus points (which are meaningless) if you somehow justify the concept of the Fighter/Mage/Thief. At this point, I'm keeping that copy of VtM for a special occasion when I can use it in the manner I desire. Really though, even if you don't win it, you should buy Age of Wonders as well as Age of Wonders Shadow Magic (You don't need AOW 2 because Shadow Magic makes it redundant). Oh, and @Mento's favorite game: Master of Magic. Because that is on sale as well.

Oh right. Wasn't this thing about Icewind Dale? Let's get on that.

Icewind Dale II was developed by Black Isle Studios and released in 2002. It is the last game made using the always amazing Infinity Engine and the only one to use full on 3rd edition rules (sadly not 3.5, which makes Rangers actually interesting and unique instead of just crummy fighters who can dual wield and cast some druid spells), rather than the extra character classes of Baldur's Gate II or the weird additional rule tweaks added in the Heart of Winter expansion to the original IWD. It's also probably the worst game made using that engine. That's not to say I didn't enjoy it, or that it's a bad game, but there are elements that are not so great to go along with the elements that are great. Let's start with some of the obvious: While sadly no D&D video game has gotten even close to the utterly absurd amount of game-breaking feats and spells featured in the various Pen and Paper supplemental materials, the character development in Icewind Dale II is still broken. The initial blame can be placed on having a point-buy system but not putting the minimum stat cap at 8 (or 6 if penalized) for character creation. This led to my party having more than a few members with 18s in anything that mattered and 3s in what didn't (mainly Intelligence and Charisma). This was also somewhat possible in the first game, obviously, but not quite to the same level of absurdity. It bears note that subraces are in this game and are pretty dang useful. Sure, my Drow Wizard may have been 2 levels behind everyone else, but I honestly wish I had made more characters with magic resistance because of how insanely useful it is. Indeed, I can even see the +3 ECL Deep Gnomes being worth using because of their magic resist (among other things, like being able to cast invisibility once per day). Sadly no prestige classes, but it's not until NWN 2 that we have those and subraces in the same game.

However, I think there is a problem with using 3rd edition; namely that it is implemented somewhat poorly, at least in comparison to something like Neverwinter Nights or Temple of Elemental Evil. Two of the main draws of 3rd edition: skills and feats, aren't necessarily inserted into the game in any sort of interesting or well-done manner. Whereas the first game loved throwing insta-murder traps and a decent number of locked chests at you, the traps in IWD2 aren't that deadly and the locked chests aren't as common. Thus, no real need to heavily invest in a rogue character. Persuasion skills are nice, and indeed allow for some of the more amusing dialogue exchanges the game has to offer, but there isn't anything necessary to gain from using them (That being said, the amount of incidental dialogue based on your character's race and class is quite impressive, though the downside to that is that Paladins and Monks will refuse quest rewards). Stealth is as useful as it floats your boat and then Alchemy, Animal Empathy and Wilderness Lore are all worthless. Feats are similarly truncated, and it wasn't long before my fighter had everything he needed (namely the Maximized Attacks feat, which grants max damage for 10 seconds once per day). The spell selection fares better, obviously, except for the druid spellbook which is kinda a bummer. Only 3 level 8 spells? What. At least one of them is Finger of Death, which totally rocks.

But enough... mechanics speak. The mechanics are fine in that they are Dungeons and Dragons mechanics and I happen to like those rules quite a bit. My real problem with Icewind Dale II is the pacing. Whereas the first game had a single hub town and you tackled one crazy huge dungeon after another, this second game has the unusual problem of having far too much talking. Oh, don't worry, it still does the thing where it throws bajillion guys at you at once and says “deal with this”. It just does that far less in favor of Baldur's Gate or Planescape-style “Walk around and talk with random people to progress. The worst example of this is in Dragon's Eye, where you have probably killed almost everything in the first few minutes but you still have to move between all three floors constantly until you finally, finally, finally can escape... only to run into a fairly interesting but still rather meandering temporal shift. This would not be a problem if the story was as interesting as something like Baldur's Gate. It makes more of an effort than the first IWD, but it's still a pretty straightforward tale of your party of dudes murdering their way to victory against an evil army of half-breeds. It's not that the areas you go to aren't interesting or that the combat isn't good, it's that you often have to stay there too long solving some sort of infernal mirror puzzle (not a joke). The endgame area is perhaps the exception, since it does have interesting writing and scenarios, but it's still a bit too long and a bit too late to change my opinion.

So thus, in TL;DR, Icewind Dale II is a sequel that tries a bit harder to be an actual respectable D&D adventure, but doesn't go far enough for that to actually work. The inclusion of 3rd edition rules is a nice benefit, even for as pointless as half of the feats seem at times, and as always those pre-rendered backgrounds look fantastic (and as always the character pathfinding is abysmal). The soundtrack was sadly not done by Jeremy Soule this time, but the guy who replaced him does a decent job as well. This game is an acceptable send-off to the Infinity Engine, but perhaps not the one I personally would want. Oh well. I still enjoyed it. Really. Don't forget to tell me what your favorite class is if you want a copy of Age of Wonders.

Hey guys! Video games! I play them on occasion! Even sometimes blog about them! Like right now. Thus, it is my pleasure to present to you yet another Fire Emblem blog where I talk in explicit detail about the myriad of systems in such a way that only people who play the games would understand and... what? You say the title isn't about Fire Emblem? Oh. Oh right. 3D platformers. But first, as per usual, other things.

Other things

At some point between this and the prior (Fire Emblem-related) blog, I finished Saints Row: The Third. Normally I'm not really a big fan of GTA-style games, but Saints Row's weird, absurdist sense of humor is such that I didn't really mind that the shooting and driving were merely competent. I'm going to echo the rest of the Giant Bomb crew when I say you should play it, even if that means just beelining through the main game and avoiding the side stuff. I hope the next game similarly delivers, though it's going to be hard to top the raw levels of balls-out absurdity that is present in this one.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is a video game. No, really. It's a video game. I'm several hours in, and that is the overwhelming sensation I get. The combat is quite fun, but everything surrounding it is... kinda stupid? The amount of pure lore dump that goes on is just astounding, especially since it's all tell and no show, thus giving the player zero incentive to care. Also there are like a billion quests and the game falls into the zone of “Single-Player MMO” pretty hard, though unlike the other games I have derisively used that term for (Divinity II), I don't think Amalur is a bad game. I hear the faction questlines are the ones to do, so maybe I will focus on those. Maybe that way I can finish the game before school starts and I undoubtedly lack consistent access to a Xbox. Because all those great PC games I'm playing can wait?

Speaking of PC games. I'm totally going to finish Icewind Dale II. Mark my words. Sure, the game actively tries to make me disinterested with its aggravatingly terrible sense of pacing, but I'm totally almost to the end of Chapter 5. There are 6 chapters. I CAN DO IT.

If you want that copy of Vampire the Masquerade, I still have it. PLEASE TAKE IT.

And now, your feature presentation:

It's not unfair to say that a good chunk of my early gaming was courtesy of Rareware. There was quite a bit of Banjo-Kazooie, Donkey Kong 64 and Diddy Kong Racing played on my N64. And while this could lead to some awkward confessions like “I didn't 100% Banjo-Kazooie until I played the XBLA version” or “Yo, I still never have beaten DK64” (both of which can be blamed on the fact that I was 6 or 7 when those games were relevant and liked deleting my own save files for some reason) this also leads to me unsurprisingly saying that I never played Conker's Bad Fur Day, as I didn't start playing M-Rated games until long after that game became expensive and hard to find. Oh wait. It's still stupid expensive and kinda hard to find. I don't care if they censored more of the swearing and changed the multiplayer, I figure that paying significantly less for the remake is a respectable trade (especially since the selection at my local Play-N-Trade is otherwise quite dire), though I'll probably end up obtaining the N64 version out of some ill-conceived sense of wanting to fill out my N64 collection to something resembling definitive somewhere down the road. For posterity. Or something.

With context out of the way, let's talk about what the game actually is. To say that Conker's Bad Fur Day is fundamentally different from something like Banjo-Kazooie would be an exaggeration, as it's still a 3D platformer in which you platform n' junk. There is an ill-advised swimming section at one point. Also Lava. The difference lies in the structure, which is far more linear. At no point did I have trouble not knowing exactly where to go or what to do, which leads to the game being noticeably shorter than the rest of its ilk. Not that that's a bad thing. You never really do the same thing twice, which is a welcome relief from the challenge barrels of DK64 or the shooting segments of Banjo Tooie. If I have any distinct fault with the gameplay, the camera is kinda tricky in the way that N64 cameras are tricky and the emphasis on shooting in the lategame leaves something to be desired. Even with Nazi Teddiez.

Of course, it's impossible to really emphasize what makes it different without getting into the tone. Conker earns its M rating easily. Banjo-Tooie definitely had its share of innuendo and double-entendres, but BFD is all of that brought to the forefront. Be it rolling around a giant ball of poo, fighting a giant singing poo monster, pooping on villagers as a bat or even peeing on flame demons to extinguish them, it's fair to say that scatological humor plays a significant role. Also violence and the occasional movie parody, with the best and most notable being a reenactment of the D-Day scene from Saving Private Ryan. There's also that part where they make fun of The Matrix, which I'm sure would have been less totally dumb in 2001, when bullet time or making fun of The Matrix wasn't as played out as it has been for the last decade or so. The thing is, most of it still works. The humor is gleefully offensive in a way I can get behind, and it also helps that there is a lot of dialogue. Like, a lot. And most of it contains copious amounts of swearing. And the voice acting is goofy and amateurish in a way that works with the characters and dialogue presented. Also you fight a giant singing poop monster.

I can't really emphasize that enough. If that does not appeal to you, then do not play this game. And yes, I am aware that the word "shit" is censored. Once again, don't care. Honestly, that's all that can be said without getting into weird specifics, and if we wanted to get into weird specifics we could talk about Fire Emblem again. Or maybe Tear Ring Saga, now that a translation patch is out. Point is, this game is pretty good and I can now claim to have played all 4 of Rare's N64 platformers. It's not my favorite, obviously Banjo-Kazooie has the benefit of nostalgia, but I'm glad I finally got around to it.