Most Disappointing Game: Asura's Wrath

I thoroughly enjoyed most of Asura's Wrath, and the hype surrounding the game wasn't altogether undeserved, but the combination of the way the ending worked and a stupid error on my part left a very bad taste in my mouth. I know that these days we tend to try and not think so much in terms of gameplay hours = value, but most of Asura's wrath's value for money comes from wanting to replay levels to obtain higher scores. Since I've never been the type of person to care much about scores and am far more concerned with enjoying the story, the fact that Capcom forced players to pay extra for the ending was ridiculous. Locking out the last 30 seconds of transition between the disc ending and the DLC ending behind S-ranking 5 levels took the ridiculousness to a level that, for me, was a dealbreaker.

Best Music: Sound Shapes

I am generally not a huge fan of platformers, but the combination of music creation and platforming in Sound Shapes is excellent. If you own either a Vita or a PS3 and are in to music at all, you must pick up this game. The whole soundtrack is incredible, but it contains the first new solo material that Beck has released since 2008, which is definitely the most exciting part for me.

I should probably make it clear here that I did not play Hotline Miami or Fez, but I have listened to their respective soundtracks. While I loved them, I think it's best to stick to soundtracks of games I've actually played. I'm thinking about picking up both games in the new year, but the backlog, it is huge.

Best 2011 Game I Played in 2012: Skyrim

I traded in my PS3 copy of Skyrim late in 2011, when I knew I could still get a good amount of money back for it and wound up getting a 360 copy for my birthday in February. I logged something like 80 hours on the 360 version and still am only about halfway through the main quest line and am still a good bit away from being finished with my personal Skyrim bucket list. Skyrim is definitely one of the two games I had the most fun with in 2012, the other will be in my top 5 below. Eventually I'll finish the things I want to accomplish in it, but I don't see myself being finished with that world for quite some time. I think only the release of the next Elder Scrolls game will stop me from picking this up and doing some adventuring from time to time.

Top 5 Games of 2012

I focused a great deal on playing games in my backlog in 2012, and there weren't a large number of titles released that I was interested in playing, so a top 5 is probably better for me this year than a top 10.

5. Analogue: A Hate Story

Christine Love's visual novel projects have been a little hit or miss for me. I generally cite Digital: A Love Story as one of the most interesting games I've ever played. The project in between Digital and Analogue, Don't Take it Personally, in comparison was a tremendous disappointment. She has completely redeemed herself in my eyes, however, with her latest effort. In Analogue, the player takes on the role as a sort of space archaeologist who has discovered a seemingly abandoned ship floating in the middle of space. Upon accessing the records of the ship, the player meets two separate A.I.s who tell an amazing story of the development and eventually decline of the ship's society and culture. If you enjoy visual novels at all or, like me, are an archivist who loves reading old personal letters and diaries, this game is pretty well a must play.

4. Hakuoki: Demon of the Fleeting Blossom

As a huge fan of shoujo manga and anime, I was thrilled when I heard that Aksys was planning to localize the main title in the Hakuoki series of Otome games. I am not fond of many of the themes in Hakuoki (its story focuses on the Shinsengumi's struggle against the Imperial forces in Japan and makes them vampires or demons or something), but it was a terrific example to me of how much better Otome games are than their anime adaptations. These days, likely due to the slumping economy and the temptation of cross-marketing, many shoujo anime titles are being adapted from Otome games, and these anime series are generally not particularly good. They are typically general to a fault, involving the protagonist in every drama possible in order to introduce as many of the romantic options as can be fit in to 12 episodes so as to entice viewers to purchase the game for further details. As a Western fan without access to the games, this is extremely frustrating. Hakuoki, whose anime adaptation is probably one of the best examples of exactly how crappy these anime adaptations can be, however, has several engaging stories to tell, some of which have a lot more emotional depth than I'm used to seeing in typical japanese pop fiction. I didn't finish all ofthe character routes in the game, but I thoroughly enjoyed those that I did, and will definitely pick this up again in the future when I want this style of gameplay.

3. Style Savvy: Trendsetters

Probably my most pleasant surprise of 2012, Style Savvy: Trendsetters is probably the best game for girls I've ever played. While I often say that I'm not a big fan of games for girls, this generally has more to do with what games for girls actually wind up being than my having trouble with the concept itself. Trendsetters is a fairly simple management sim: the player manages a fashion boutique, provides customers with items in the style they want, chooses which fashions to sell in their boutique and competes in taste-based fashion contests. While it's simple, if you have any interest in fashion, you should get a good deal of play time out of it. It's addictive, the clothes in the game look great, the character models are cute, and it's full of female characters who are working hard and succeeding in their respective careers. While some have complained that all of the character models and clothes are the same size (ie small and skinny), this is more of a mechanical limitation than anything else as having all the models and clothes be the same size makes the game a lot easier to fit on to one cartridge. Other than Skyrim, playing Trendsetters is probably the most fun I had with games all year.

2. Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward

I loved 999. I would probably put that game in my personal top 10 games of all time. As a sequel to 999, Virtue's Last Reward definitely did not disappoint, though I did not like it quite as much as the original. VLR took many of the principles introduced in 999 and amped them up to the next level in ways that were exquisitely crafted and well-thought out, and the changes to the flow chart system enabling the player to jump between nodes as in Radiant Historia is probably one of the best gameplay refinements I've ever seen in a sequel. That said, I felt like the sheer number of paths and endings in VLR divvied up all of the game's information in a way that I wasn't too fond of. I found that many of the character endings were totally unsatisfying, because the writers wanted to save all the best revelations for the True Ending. As there was a much smaller number of endings 999, I felt like each playthrough gave me just enough information to keep going and see what another start might bring me the next time around. VLR was a little too spread out for my taste to the point where a few times I really had to force myself to keep playing it. Also, in my opinion, only Luna's path in VLR came close to delivering the creepy atmosphere that I felt was present pretty well all the time in 999.

1. Journey

I don't think a game has ever taken me on such an emotional journey in such a short amount of time as Journey did. Beautiful art style and graphics, amazing atmosphere, and gorgeous music combine here to make one of the most incredible experiences that games, for me, have ever had to offer. In the roughly 2-3 hours that it took me on my first playthrough, I felt curious, puzzled, elated, horrified, miserable, and elated all over again. All of this occurred without actual characters or dialog or really anything aside from gameplay and atmosphere. Journey is one of the best examples that games have so much more to offer than violence.

I really should have checked to make sure that my Wii was working properly before I purchased Xenoblade Chronicles. It's been forever since I actually turned the system on and while I made sure that it would actually turn on and that my wii-motes were still working, I neglected to check the disc drive.

Yep, Wii drive is no longer wanting to read discs.

Now I have before me a really, really crap dilemma. I've opened Xenoblade, so I doubt I'll be able to get a refund for it, and I'll probably have to take advantage of trading it in ASAP. I have two choices here:

1. Trade some of the extra controllers I have lying around (I never play games with other people and this generation will be ending relatively soon) along with a couple games I don't want and are still worth something and buy a refurbished Wii. Out of pocket, I figure this will cost me about 30 or 40 dollars.

2. Trade Xenoblade (since I doubt the EB I bought it from will give me a refund) along with the games and hardware I intended to trade for a Wii and get a 3DS. Out of pocket, I figure this will cost me about 50 dollars.

I don't want to send my system to Nintendo since I've heard this repair generally costs about $85 and I would like to keep my original Wii due to the virtual console games I have on it (one of which is Ocarina of Time, which I intend to play some time this year). Getting a 3DS would be the least wasteful of these transactions since I'm fairly certain that aside from a few virtual console games, I will not be playing anything on my Wii aside from Xenoblade any time soon.

Yes, I know I could play the game with Dolphin, but I'm pretty anti game piracy.

I am also working on borrowing a Wii from someone, but I don't have a lot of options on that front since very few of my friends play video games.

EDIT: I found Wii Fit Plus and Harry Potter 5 discs. Tried both and they work. Wondering if Xenoblade is the problem. Will call EB in the morning. Sooooooo frustrating. I heard there were problems with the European launch as well, I wonder if that'll happen here.

Atelier Totori: Adventurer of Arland

I dropped Atelier Totori last night after about 13 hours of play time. While I wasn't totally hating it, I was having a lot of trouble finding the motivation to keep playing since the game is, in my opinion, pretty thin on story. I had never played one of the Atelier games before, and when I saw that Totori had come out last winter, I figured it was a good chance, since I could add it to my Christmas wish list. Critics had generally nice things to say about it, I like turn-based RPG combat, and the art seemed cute. I figured Totori and I would get along quite well.

And, I guess, in some respects we did. Atelier Totori's combat mechanics are perfectly serviceable -- same with the crafting mechanics (though I feel like the system relies more on the sheer volume of items you can create, rather than any meaningful depth or complexity). The problem is, I found little motivation to quest and craft when there was so little story to chase. Yes, I know that Totori is becoming an adventurer so that eventually she can search for her mother, but like Fate/Extra, the road to solving the mystery is incredibly repetitive. Go out, fight monsters, collect alchemy ingredients, return to City, claim quest rewards, go to Atelier, make stuff, go out to fight monsters again. I don't mind some routine in gameplay (I am, after all, a huge Persona fan), but in the case of Atelier Totori, I didn't find enough about any of it interesting enough to continue with the tedium.

I did appreciate having the ability to play the game in Japanese with English subtitles -- I wish this was something game companies who license and distribute Japanese games in the US would do more often. I also thought the art style was absolutely gorgeous, though while I love my cute things, the game was a little too moe in tone, even for me.

Skyrim

In one long play session, I was able to complete several small items on the bucket list I created last time, and I made some decent progress on some of the larger goals. Here's what I got done:

1. Completed "A Night To Remember"
2. Completed requirements to buy properties in Riften and Solitude (waiting until I get 100k gold to buy them)
3. Reached just over 50k gold
4. Obtained Explorer achievement
5. Completed 1 side quest (The White Phial)
6. Completed 1 main story quest (Diplomatic Immunity)

It's a decent amount of progress, I guess, for one play session. I have a major written assessment to do this weekend for a job I've applied for, so I'm thinking that next week while I'm waiting to hear back about whether or not I made the next round of selection would be a great time to fall back in to the Skyrim k-hole for a few days. I'm hoping in my next session to complete Act 2 of the main storyline, but we'll see.

Xenoblade Chronicles

I realized the other day that it is going to be impossible for me to ignore Xenoblade Chronicles. This is more than a little frustrating for me since the game is on the Wii. I bought the Wii when I was still figuring out the types of games I'd like to be playing as an adult, fuelled primarily by my childhood nostalgia for Mario and Kirby. The thing is, the adult me really doesn't care about platformers or cart racers, and I have been pretty content to allow my Wii to sit in a corner and gather dust since I realized that.

And then came Xenoblade Chronicles.

Since it's being lauded as one of the best JRPGs ever, there's no way I can leave it alone. The Wii must be dusted off, the batteries in the Wii-mote replaced. The real problem is that after I accomplished all this, I realized that I'd never connected my Wii to my HDTV and the composites make everything look terrible. Looks like in addition to the game, I'm going to need to pick up some Wii component cables and, likely, a classic controller pro.

The things we do for video games.

Anyone have any opinions on off-brand Wii Component cables? They run about $35 here and I wouldn't mind saving a bit of money and buying some weird brand, but I don't want to waste money on something that doesn't work.

I've been waffling a lot when it comes to games recently. Starting a lot of stuff, not finishing very much, and generally dithering around without much direction. I usually prefer to be fairly directed with my media consumption. Start something, finish it, write something about it (or not, depending on my mood), move on to whatever's next. I'd say that all this dithering around is the result of two things that are going on with me right now. First, this stint of unemployment I've been going through has become so long and so ridiculous that it's becoming more and more difficult for me to focus on one thing at a time due to the sheer amplitude of my own boredom. Second, I have been nervous about falling back in to the Skyrim K-hole.

Skyrim does strange things to me. For some reason I can't identify, it grabs me by the balls (for lack of a better term) and refuses to let me go. I start up my 360, load my last save and then all of a sudden find myself sitting 3 days later, no shower, not much food, not much sleep, several levels gained, too many miscellaneous objectives completed, and no progress made on the main quest line.

Games don't do this to me very often. Sure, I get pretty absorbed in them sometimes, but generally speaking I'm fairly good at controlling my play time or at least maintaining my hygiene through a series of long sessions. Skryim just happens to have something that, for me, makes the real world not matter very much while I'm playing it.

That said, I'd really, really like to finish it some time soon. I don't mean complete all the quests or anything, but I'd like to finish the things I'd like to get done in it, so I can really move on to other things. I think getting Skyrim out of the way would give me back some of the focus I've been lacking recently. I also still have the time right now to let myself fall in to the K-hole for a few days at a time without worrying too much about the state of my life outside Tamriel. If possible, I'd like to be done by the end of March, because there's a pretty decent chance I might be going back to work fairly soon after that, and I'm not sure moving and starting a new job will be very conducive to finishing up with this game.

All that said, for my own reference, here's the list of stuff I want to get done before I'll consider my experience with Skyrim complete:

1. Complete the Main Quest
2. Complete the civil war quest line (probably on the Stormcloaks side, after I've completed the main quest)
3. Purchase and upgrade all of the houses
4. Get the 100,000 gold achievement
5. Get the 10 side quests completed achievement
6. Do the "A Night To Remember..." daedric quest, since it's been talked about so much and seems like fun
7. Finish the Companions questline
8. Do Mjoll the Lioness' misc. quest because she's badass and I want to do her a favour (even though I hate falmer and thus, dwemer ruins)
9. Get the Explorer achievement
10. Reach level 50

Not a particularly long list as 2011 was primarily a year of attacking the gigantic backlog for me. There are also a number of 2011 games that I have not yet been able to get my hands on such as: Saints Row: The Third (on its way to me right now yay), Portal 2, and Driver: San Francisco. I hope to get to play those at some point in 2012, but we'll see.

Most Disappointing Game: Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective

I should love Ghost Trick. I want to love Ghost Trick. I tried very hard to love Ghost Trick, and I utterly failed at loving it. While I have not much liked recent additions to the Ace Attorney series, such as Investigations or Apollo Justice, I had higher hopes for Ghost Trick, since it was primarily under the creative direction of Shu Takumi, whose games I've come to love over the years. While I do think that Ghost Trick is a very stylish game -- the art, character designs, animation, and music are all fantastic -- the game play fell terribly short for me. I did not enjoy the puzzle mechanics and the fact that they were timed only served to further frustrate me. It's a shame the puzzles were such a miss for me, because I would have loved to have seen the outcome of the story.

Best 2010 Game I Played in 2011: 9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors

If it had been released in 2011, 999 would be my Game of the Year since it is definitely the game I enjoyed the most that also has the fewest caveats. 999 is not without its problems -- the narrative prose can be pretty damned flowery at times and I was a bit annoyed at having to do the first room escape puzzle over and over again -- but those problems are so minor in the face of everything that 999 does right that they hardly bothered me at all. I am a huge baby when it comes to "scary" games, but 999 is full of so much great dramatic tension and general eeriness that I was completely creeped out while at the same time obsessed with getting through the story so I could see what happened next. Great characters, atmosphere, tension, story-telling and challenging but organic puzzles all in one fabulous package. Who could ask for more than that? Here's to hoping its sequel, Kyokugen Dasshutsu ADV: Zennin Shibou Desu, makes it to North America.

Best Original Soudtrack: Bastion & To The Moon

Two great examples of beautiful music perfectly supporting a beautiful story.

Most Wanted Sequel (but Totally Never Happening): L.A. Noire

It's no secret that Noir is one of my favourite fictional genres. LA Confidential is my favourite movie of all time and I've been a huge fan of James Ellroy's novels since I started reading them when I was in high school. I also love the early classics in the genre such as The Big Sleep, Double Indemnity, The Maltese Falcon etc etc etc... L.A. Noire is kind've my video game wet dream. I never thought I'd get to see a video game that updated and yet paid great homage to my favourite genre in such a fun and respectful manner. The problem is that it just felt unfinished. Yes, the facial recognition tech lent a fantastic realism to the characters, the acting was a pretty huge cut above what we often see in video games, the cases and plot were pretty well-written (with a few notable low points), but the action sequences were repetitive and the interrogation system was remarkably unintuitive. While I know there are a lot of people out there who would never want to see a sequel to L.A. Noire, I think that its gameplay could definitely do with another layer of polish. When I hear discussion about L.A. Noire, I'm always reminded of the discussions surrounding the first iterations of Mass Effect and Assassin's Creed: two games whose potential was immediately recognized, and whose gameplay improved significantly in later series entries. I'm okay with L.A. Noire as it is now, and it was definitely one of my favourite games of 2011, but I can't help wondering if it might be better the second time around. I doubt it'll ever happen, but I don't see the harm in hoping.

Favourite Game of 2011: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Yes, Skyrim is my favourite game of 2011. I don't think it's necessarily the best game of 2011, but it was certainly my favourite. It's been quite a long time since a game grabbed me as much as Skyrim did (I think Persona 3 Portable was probably the last) and I had a great deal of fun with it. Even though I'm not really in to first person perspective games or open world games (I often find them to be a bit oppressive because I can never decide what to do), Skyrim came out at a time when I needed a change, when I needed to play something different from what I usually play. It'd been nothing but turn-based JRPGs and a few adventure games in the months leading up to Skyrim's release and, once I started playing it, it was like an oasis in the desert -- totally refreshing and something I couldn't pull myself away from.

But....

...I bought the PS3 version of the game.

And yes, it is pretty broken. I bought the PS3 version because my XBOX 360 is a fairly early model and makes a lot of noise. I expected that the PS3 version would be buggier than the others, but since I don't have a PC capable of running the game and my PS3 is nice and quiet, I figured that the overall better immersion in the game would be an OK trade-off for a little extra Bethesda jank. Had I known that there was a fundamental architectural incompatibility between Bethesda's game engine and the PS3 hardware, I would've put up with the extra noise. I did not ever finish the main story quest because after a certain point, the framerate would drop so badly and the game would lock up so often than playing was a lot more frustrating than fun. I put in about 120 hours on two different characters, but in the end I had to give up, just couldn't deal with the brokenness any more. Luckily, the trade-in value in the PS3 version of Skyrim is quite high and I was able to get $35 back for it and my birthday is just around the corner, so I'll start over eventually with the 360 version.

All will work out in the end, but honestly this resolution isn't really okay. The PS3 and the 360 have been out for a long time now and I feel like the statute of limitations on the "aw, building games for both platforms at once is really hard" excuse has long passed. As a consumer, I feel like I should be able to walk in to a store, having done a reasonable amount of research, and buy a game for a system I own and expect that it will work. I may not like the game, and the company who made it is not responsible for that, but they should be responsible for whether or not their product is functional and works properly. I've found Bethesda's reactions to the PS3 version being so crap to be pretty disappointing. While I love Skyrim, its utter brokenness and Bethesda's weird reaction to it put a very ugly black mark on my Game of the Year.

I was thinking about reviewing Catherine as soon as I'd finished my first playthrough when I realized that I have absolutely no idea what score I would give it. I have such mixed feelings about it that I don't think I can numerically quantify them. I guess a rambly blog post will have to do.

I should probably start by saying that I didn't have particularly high expectations for Catherine. I knew after seeing the puzzle aspects for the first time that the gameplay likely wouldn't be something I would be all that crazy about. As a huge fan of Persona 3 and 4, however, the gameplay wasn't all that important for me in the first place. What I really wanted was a more mature set of relationship mechanics, an interesting story, and a sneak peek at what Persona 5 might look like.

I guess I kind've got what I wanted, but I'm still not really sure how much I liked what I got aside from the visuals. Catherine is visually stunning and I love how the dev team has taken the Persona 3 and 4 style onto HD consoles. The usual stable of voice actors also performed quite well (though I have to say that listening to them all together desperately made me want to replay P3P again and I'm trying very hard not to do that right now) and I was happy with them voicing actual adults rather than teenagers who just act like them.

So yeah, all the elements of what I wanted were there, but there was just one problem: the story just completely failed to connect with me. Yes, it was interesting and the block puzzles weren't quite as bad as I thought they were going to be (though I'm totally okay with never playing any of them again). And while I heartily commend the dev team for again making a game that treads into the realm of the personal, this time they hit that roadblock with me that is always a huge risk with making games about personal issues or everyday life: I had a tough time meaningfully identifying with the story and characters.

I guess in some ways you could call me a female Vincent with a few twists. I'm 30, single on purpose, and an educated professional who is having serious trouble finding steady work in their field due to the current economic downturn. I don't have commitment issues, but I'm definitely scared shitless of marriage and babies.

So really, I did sympathize with Vincent in some ways. The problem was that I made the mistake of aiming directly for Katherine's true ending. While I thought the ending was okay and turned out nicely, I didn't find it to be particularly believable. Katherine was, for me, probably one of the least likable female characters I've come across recently. Yeah, I understand that she's bossy by nature, that her telling him what to do and him liking it is an accepted dynamic in their relationship, and that she had a lot on her mind. That is all totally reasonable to me. What isn't is that she almost completely disregarded all of Vincent's feelings throughout the whole story. It just seemed like such a weird, one-way dynamic to me. I mean, if any of my friends was sitting in front of me looking as shitty as Vincent was throughout the game, the first thing out of my mouth would have been "holy fuck, are you okay?" and not "you'll have to be more responsible with your money from now on."

It all just seemed very one-sided and dysfunctional and I don't think the creators did a good enough job providing the players with sufficient context to actually believe that their relationship was worth saving.

Maybe I'm also getting a bit tired of this type of relationship dynamic being such common fictional fodder. We are often presented with the irresponsible male commitment-phobe who is desperately trying to escape the clutches of his pushy, marriage-focused partner only to eventually, through some ridiculous epiphany (often involving some form of cheating) realize the error of his ways and, in the end, do exactly what he's told.

Yeah, I'm not the biggest fan of marriage being seen as a requirement for growing up.

Anyway, the good thing about the game is that there are alternative endings to be had that are more fun than the stuffy Katherine true ending. The problem is, once I had finished my first playthrough, I had no desire to redo the puzzles and get the gold awards necessary to do multiple attempts at obtaining different endings. Instead, I resigned myself to watching the other endings on youtube, which was significantly less fun (though significantly better for my sanity).

I do believe that the True Freedom ending is the best ending for Vincent. I also think it's possible that this is the canon ending. While I haven't finished Strange Journey, I do know enough about the game to know that, ultimately, Neutral is the alignment that will give you the best ending and that this is also true of other MegaTen games. It loses a little, however, due to Johnny's comment to Vincent about the fact that Katherine may still have feelings for him -- hinting that maybe he hadn't chosen the right way.

The True Cheater ending with Catherine, I have to say, was the most fun to watch. I truly believe that if you have the patience to play the game more than once and didn't get this ending the first time around, it's worth going back and trying to get it on purpose. It completely justifies all of the supernatural elements of the game (though those were never a problem for me, given the fact that I knew they were going to be there right from the start).

All in all, Catherine was a super confusing experience for me. I have highly mixed feelings about the whole game, both its story and weird puzzle gameplay. While I wish I could say I loved it or I hated it, I think my feelings for it are probably somewhere in the middle and though I can't really quantify my feelings for it by giving it a score or anything, I feel like I'll probably be thinking about the game and its story for a long time to come. It's definitely a game that'll stick with me.

So here I am on the unemployment train, running out of the money I saved up from my last freelance contract and running out of stuff to watch and I haven't played anything other than a short revisit to Puzzle Quest after finishing P3P for the third time.  I have a great backlog of games to play too, and I just haven't been inspired to pick up anything else.  Even before P3P I hadn't played anything since FFXIII.  I totally fail at playing games this year.
 
Hmmmm, maybe a full replay of the Phoenix Wright games would inspire me to finally get moving on the Edgeworth game.  Maybe I'll pull out the DS and get to work on that...