Keeping a list of all the games I completed last year really helped motivate me to finish a lot of my backlog, so I'm going to continue doing the same for this year.
This a list of all the games, new and old, I completed in 2016.
(1/1) - The first season of the Walking Dead is a very special game to me so I don't say this lightly when I say that I think Tales from the Borderlands might be my favorite Telltale series. I never played any of the Borderlands games, don't plan to either, but I bought this on a whim because I heard so many people praising it at the end of the year. Best 8 bucks I ever spent. I laughed, I cried, it was as Gortys put it, "a roller coaster of emotions." Tales from the Borderlands was one of the few games were I just sort of sat in my chair for a while after finishing it and thought about how much fun it was. 2016 is off to a good start.
(1/20) - So it took me way longer than it should have to finish White Day because I had to troubleshoot a myriad of technical problems to get it running properly on my Windows 10 computer. However it is a testament to just how compelling White Day is that I didn't give up on the game after having it crash so many times and loosing so much progress when I first attempted to play it. For a Korean game released in 2001 White Day does so much right with mood by having the janitor, and other ghosts, wander around the school in real time. Even when reading notes or looking through your inventory there is still the threat of the janitor sneaking up on you. And while this can sometimes be frustrating when you are trying to solve a difficult puzzle the game does a good job of warning the player by playing the sound of the janitor's keys jiggling when he is nearby. Whenever I heard that jiggle I usually had just enough time to hid before being discovered. So what makes White Day scary is not really so much the threat of the janitor but not knowing when or where he will appear, making it so you have to always be on guard when navigating the school. And, unlike a lot of first-person horror games I've played, there is a compelling narrative and cast of characters that motivated me to get through all the scares so I could see what happens next. There are certainly a lot of problems with White Day, besides technical issues many of the puzzles are fairly obtuse or require a lot of trial and error. But, considering the game's vintage and everything it does right, White Day is still well worth playing and I'll definitely be playing through the game multiple times to get all the endings.
(2/11) - After completing Gravity Rush on the Vita I am very comforted by the fact that there is a sequel coming out in the near future. Not just because I really enjoyed the title but because the ending of Gravity Rush feels like the finale to the first season of a television series, with the immediate threat dealt with but many mysteries still unanswered. Not only did the ending feel like a television series but Gravity Rush in general has a very episodic method of storytelling that I appreciated. While there is an overall narrative, and many chapters are directly connected, there is a stand-alone feel to a lot of the stories that I thought gave the story a lot of breathing room and made the pacing feel more relaxed when compared to other action games. Also while the gravity gameplay was difficult to control, especially during combat, I found that it made me feel more connected to the character since she was also struggling to use her powers (plus it just looked plain cool to fling yourself across an entire city like a rag doll). So yeah, I don't have much else to say that isn't a repeat of what every video game reviewer in 2012 already said. Gravity Rush is great. Go play it.
(2/17) - My feelings about Shin Megami Tensei IV are fairly mixed. On one hand I loved the oppressive atmosphere of the game, particularly after entering Tokyo. Talking to demons, exploring devastated urban landscapes, and meeting people living underground in fear all combined with an amazing soundtrack made me feel like I was a cyberpunker just barely surviving in a crazy dystopian future. And the gameplay is the same great SMT formula, demon fusing, elemental weaknesses and all that, but there were still many aspects to the game that left me pulling my hair out in frustration. The over-world map is unnecessarily difficult to navigate, there is often no indication on how the player is suppose to get to the next story point and the AI controlled human party members can randomly screw up entire battles by using elemental attacks that strengthen enemies. However by biggest complaint has to do with the story. While I love the overall plot and premise for Shin Megami Tensei IV the characters are as boring as dry toast, and the stale English voice acting doesn't help to make them more likable. The story also tries to tell a complex mortality tale where you have to decide which side you will align with, Law or Chaos, when it is immediately apparent that both sides suck and that they will both lead to unsatisfying endings. However the requirements for taking the neutral path are so complex that there is no way to get it without a guide or by replaying the game multiple times and discovering it through trial and error. There is the core of a fantastic game in SMT IV and even with these problems it is still a great game, so here's hoping that the newly released sequel "finally" lives up to its potential.
Birthright - (3/17)
(7/25) - One of the most important aspects for me in storytelling is pacing. Even if a game, movie or book has a great plot, characters or setting it can all be ruined by bad pacing. Zero Time Dilemma is a lot different from the previous installments of the Zero Escape series in that it gives the player a lot more control over how the story plays out, since you can play any 90 minute chunk in any order you want. However because of this control I felt like the pacing of ZTD's narrative was thrown out of whack. Every story segment feels very abrupt with the player being thrown into a new puzzle room for almost every segment you choose, with there usually being a short cut-scene before and after the puzzle room. This abrupt pacing in theory matches the feeling ZTD's story is going for, with the characters having their memories erased every 90 minutes, but it also creates a lot of awkward moments. During the first story segment I chose, when I knew almost nothing about any of the new characters, Carlos starts telling his team this whole sad back-story about his past almost out of nowhere. If this had been a moment later in the game, after I had gotten to know the team better, it would have worked out fine but instead it sort of felt like a moment that was just tossed into the scene. And that is my biggest complaint about Zero Time Dilemma, I like a lot of stuff that happens in the narrative and trying to figure everything out was a lot of fun, but it all feels like it is being presented as plot points on a beat sheet without any transition or build up. This changes as the game's story becomes more linear during the conclusion, and maybe it would have felt more natural if I had played the game in a different order, but the awkward way the story was presented made a lot of the game's big developments fall flat for me. Zero Time Dilemma reminds me of that scene in The Prestige where Christian Bale first does the ball trick but it is presented in such a blunt manner that the audience just sits there for a minute before they realized what he just did and muster up a golf-clap.
(8/4) - Best Uncharted. The series has always been about characters and cool set-pieces for me, never about the actual plot or shooting. The shooting still wasn't great but the story really pulled me in this time plus I really enjoyed the stronger focus on puzzles and the relationship between the two brothers. Also the game is practically a canonical Monkey Island game, so that is really cool.
(8/23) - Had a good time with this one. Until Dawn was basically a big-budget Telltale game, mixed with Shenmue's grabbing and looking at stuff mechanic, but I enjoyed it for what it was. Playing the game with my two brothers was especially fun as we discussed what to do and how to keep all these characters we didn't really care about alive.
Conquest - (9/3)
(10/2) - So Trails of Cold has horrible pacing issues when you look at the overall story. A bunch of plot happens at the beginning of the game, introducing the characters and setting, but the setup never ends. For the next 90 hours I felt like I was in a perpetual first act of a film, a never ending build-up that felt like it was going to finally climax into the story's main conflict at the end of almost every chapter but never really did. Then during the game's last hour or so there are like a dozen plot twist all revealed at once and then the game just ends right when things finally get rolling. HOWEVER, I still really liked this game and invested almost 100 hours into it. While the main plot takes forever to truly begin, spending time with the game's main cast is very entertaining and the game does a fantastic job of building its world. And when I say "world building" I don' t just mean the game explaining how a village's local economy is being effected by new taxes but how the game builds a world full of people with their own lives, personalities, families and problems. Every NPC in every town has a name and history that you can watch play out throughout your stay in each town. The characters that live at the Thor's Military Academy are especially memorable since you revisit the school at the beginning of every chapter, allowing them to have story arcs that take place over the course of the whole game. And the game effortlessly weaves all these NPCs' stories into a big interconnect quilt that is amazingly entertaining to experience. NPCs are not Trails of Cold Steel's only strong point either, the combat is simple but strategic, the game's presentation is a huge upgrade from the Falcom games that preceded it and the game features a great localization with some really fantastic English voice acting. The voice cast also deserves extra props for featuring a lot of fairly new voice talent, a lot of which got their start working on Dust: An Elysian Tale, which is a great achievement considering that most video game dubs feature the same stable of anime actors in almost every localization. Trails of Cold Steel's story may take forever to get started but I enjoyed hanging out in Erebonia so much I almost never noticed, which surprised me since a game with bad pacing is usually a deal breaker for me. The game may not be to everyone tastes but I would still call Trails of Cold Steel one of the few truly great RPGs on the Vita (even though it also came out on the PS3). Can't wait to jump into the sequel.
(11/4) - Enjoyed this game more than I thought I would so I wrote a blog entry on it.
(12/27) - One the best shooters I've played in a long time. Gave me a lot of warm fuzzy feelings.
(12/29) - I liked this a lot more than Limbo (which I never finished) and the puzzles were thoughtful without being frustrating. The storytelling was also really captivating. Also that ending. That ending. Boy that ending.
(12/31) - BT is a treasure.
