My Gaming Experience of 2016
The games I finished or played enough to merit mentioning in 2016.
List items
-
(PC)
1/6/16 - Completed Story
Ori is a beautiful game. This is most apparent visually, but the music leaves the biggest and lasting impression. And to be quite honest, I love a song with some good oboe!
-
(PC)
1/10/16 - Completed
I decided to suck it up and get back to this scary as hell game. Ended up finishing it and feeling very satisfied. While this isn't a sequel to Amnesia: The Dark Descent, it does have much in common with their previous game but adds many welcome changes.
-
(PC)
1/24/16 -
I had been hearing high praise for this game, liked what I was seeing from the trailers, and the $30 price tag wasn't asking too much for me to try the game out. First few hours have been a learning process but I feel I'm really starting to understand the game. Combat has felt good since the beginning. Having end game DLC being one of the first quests you pick up and not knowing it's end-game content is pretty brutal.
-
(PC)
1/24/16 - 50+ hours played
RF Online, World of Warcraft, Aion, Wildstar, Guild Wars 2, Rift, Tera, Blade & Soul, ArcheAge, and probably some others. I've played my fair share of MMO's. Some of them hook me (Wildstar, Tera, RF Online), some of them I couldn't play for more than an hour (Rift, Blade & Soul), and some devour 4-5 years of my life (World of Warcraft).
I remember getting a beta invite for this game forever ago. Was immediately on the fence when character selection included some of the most boring looking people ever (including not having the dwarven race). Things didn't get better when for the first 15 minutes I wasn't killing or looting anything, I was just running back and forth in a town turning in quests. I ended up putting the game down after that.
Fast forward to early 2016 and for some reason I just decided I wanted to check it out again. Went through that early game process again but then found those quests that said "Yo dawg, slaughter those huge ass mosquitos outside for me." Finally those MMO claws dug back into me and I was fascinated to learn about this game.
-
(PC)
2/3/16 -
Season 5 came out the other week and once again, Diablo 3 is better than ever. This season brought about the most changes since Seasons have become a thing (Seasons are comparable to Diablo 2's Ladder).
Being able to "Rebirth" characters and start fresh with them is wonderful. Especially since this season you can acquire a class 6-piece set for completing 3 specific Seasonal achievements (you get the first 2 pieces for getting your character to 70). My favorite character/class in the game, my fem-barb, which I had grown tire with since upgrades were so few and far between, had become exciting again with a whole new set and way to play.
2/16/16 -
I can't stop playing.
-
(PC)
2/14/16 -
This game makes me feel like a mad man
2/29/16 -
I'm very slowly chipping away at this game. I'm not the biggest fan of puzzle games but Braid was something completely different for me so I knew I was going to play this game.
I have a love/hate relationship for this game. The successful click sound from completing the puzzle can be damn near orgasmic when you're driving yourself insane because you feel you know the solution but the noise just isn't happening. Or when you come up on a puzzle that has things you haven't seen before but you're not sure if you're suppose to figure it out or if there's something nearby to show you what to do but you can't find anything so you start to get frustrated. But eventually you make your way to a new area and you find that object or marking from the last place and realize this is where you learn how those puzzles work.
There's so much back and forth with my emotions in this game that I have to take my time or I may lose my sanity.
-
(PC)
2/29/16 -
This game is fun as shit. Ys games are known for being fun as shit but this one is near the top of the fun shit pile.
Ys is an action RPG. Doesn't matter which Ys game you get, they're all action RPGs featuring Adol and probably Dogi. Most Ys games though have you switching between characters based on the type of enemy, and using healing potions. In Oath in Felghana though you play as Adol and you don't have the time to deal with potions and partners. Aside from some story and dialogue that never overstays it's welcome, this game is non-stop action with some tough ass boss fights (another Ys trope).
-
(Vita/Soon-to-be PC)
2/29/16 -
Let me hit some notes real quick. Justin and friends have a Champion of Christmas fighting game tournament. This game was the main event. I hadn't played before. I lost. I want to get good so I will be prepared for Champion of Christmas '16.
Vita version of this game plays pretty well but not ideal controls given that the D-pad and circle pad are a little too close and the D-pad is a little too small. Still though it's a good start to get accustomed to characters before the release of this game on Steam. So far Hazama is my main.
-
(PC)
2/29/16 -
it took almost a year, but I finally love Gwent. That card game is unbelievable. Other than that, I've dedicated myself to beating Wild Hunt this year. I had restarted the game at some point late last year given all the issues I had and this second play-through is still going great. Also have downloaded some QoL (quality of life) mods to the game (Fast travel to a sign-post from anywhere, auto-loot, over 9k weight mod, etc.)
4/5/16 - Completed Main Story
It. Is. Done. And I'm more relieved than I am overjoyed of my experience. There is so much to love about this game but I just can't help to be happy that I've accomplished my goal of finishing the main story so that I don't feel that I need to keep playing.
5/21/16 - Completed Hearts of Stone
So after completing the Main story I took a break from games with story, or just played games where I ignore the story (Fallout 4). It didn't take long though for me to decide I wanted to check out the Hearts of Stone expansion after hearing it's some of the best content in the game. Now after finishing it I would have to agree.
My one complaint I have about the expansion is that I decided to just make a new character rather than using my Geralt I beat the game with. The only part where the difference mattered is in Gwent. They give your new Stock-Geralt his own set of gear, loads of money, runes, and leveled to 30. But looks like poor Stock-Geralt forgot to go win/buy some Gwent cards.
-
(3DS)
3/14/16 -
I was already 23 hours into this game but put it down last year because I prefer to play on the hardest difficulty (for the true Etrian Odyssey experience!) and the brutal fucking boss battles, or any battle for that matter, after having just completed the first Etrian Odyssey Untold, had exhausted me of my enjoyment for the EO experience. That along with the fact that I had picked up Persona Q which is practically another EO game, just not as difficult and with the Persona 3&4 crew (granted not necessarily a better game).
When I was playing this game and Persona Q I was getting annoyed by the difficulty differences between the two on the Expert difficulty. They both have the same concept, enemies have more health and do more damage, but Persona Q was cake-walk juxtaposed to EO2U's Expert boss battles. I decided to turn down this game to Standard if I was ever going to see myself complete both games.
So last week I decided to pick this game back up and see where I had left off. of course it was right before a difficult boss battle. Even on Standard difficulty Etrian Odyssey bosses can be a handful (they at least require some competency, or over-leveling). I ended up beating the Flame Demon and making my way onto the next floor of the horribly named (Ginnungagap) side dungeon that is part of the Untold story mode.
Given that it had been a few months that I had sunk my teeth into an EO (or EO-Lite) game, I got hit hard by the map drawing and dungeon crawling progression bug. I ended up completing the 2nd floor of Ginnasdfgap, and made my way to the 3rd Stratum. I am now currently making my through the 13th floor and have over 30 hours put in.
Want to add that I am still playing on Standard and I may have to bump it back up to Expert. I'm familiar with the EO games where you can't take it easy in any fucking battle. Every damn thing will destroy you. Where one-shotting a boss battle only happens because you read a guide on the boss and made sure you were sufficiently over-leveled and had the proper resists. On Standard I'm just steam-rolling the random battles, and already killed some spider queen on my first attempt. I'm not here for the story (granted I play story mode since I like the unique classes, and for my characters to have an actual identity), I play the EO games for the satisfaction you get of progression.
-
(PC)
5/7/16 -
I've played enough to be labeled as a Master in the game. Which mostly means I've been playing for 300+ hours.
-
(PC)
5/7/16 -
I've been told by some friends how Fallout 4 just isn't doing it for them since it's too much like Fallout 3. I never played Fallout 3 though so I don't have this issue and man am I glad I don't. Tack on the fact that I decided to step away from this game until there were some quality of life and/or immersion mods and patches to fix bugs that were game breaking of just ruined the fun.
I'm loving this game. My first initial thought that the game wasn't that good looking has almost completely flipped. the music, atmospheric noises, god-rays (sunbeams), weather, so much of this game is just fucking delicious. I have this huge game yet here I am taking my time exploring everything because I just can't get enough.
My only real gripe about this game is the story, it sucks. I'm tired of the whole starting a game off with a big ass emergency, only to throw a big ass world at you right afterwards and kind of hint at you like, "You'd totally want to help these complete strangers with their issues before finding your son that was kidnapped! Oh and you're wife was murdered, but fuck her, haha!"
-
5/7/16 -
Last month I had taken a week off (because I can) with one of the main goals being to beat Witcher: Wild Hunt. After accomplishing that I really wanted to just play something that I found enjoyable without some story nagging at me. Enter World of Warcraft for the billionth time. So much credit has to be given to Blizzard for all the work they've put into WoW to keep it fresh and enjoyable. I have no plans right now to raid again but gearing up to do so has been fun and really scratched that no-story itch.
-
5/21/16 -
2 or 3 weeks ago Endless Legend received a new expansion named Shifters, sprucing up the games winter mechanics and adding a new bat/bunny race to the game. I've only ever completed one game of Endless Legend which I had the Game on easy and the game speed on "fast" where the game is over in 150 turns (granted all mechanics that take a specific number of turns is also reduced to compensate). I'm now about 70 turns into my new game as the new race, Allayi, on Normal difficulty and game speed (300 turns).
One of the best things about Endless Legend is how unique each race is. With the addition of a new race they're pretty much saying, "here's a completely new way to play our game." 70 turns in as Allayi and I'm still enjoying the shit out of Endless Legend but don't having any game play stories to share given that I'm still in the first third of this game.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
0 Comments