Even eight years after its original release, The Witcher is still pretty cool
It's been a few weeks since my last blog here on Giant Bomb. There are a few reasons for that, some of which I won't go into, what with this being a video game website and all, but the main cause of that inactivity is that I just don't really have anything to write about right now. At the time of writing this I'm playing through two RPGs side by side - the Enhanced Edition of The Witcher, which I've just reached Chapter III of in a little over twenty hours of play, and Pokémon Omega Ruby, which has just shy of sixty hours on its clock as I approach the Elite Four. They're radically different styles of RPG, with perhaps their only shared value being the fact they're both demanding huge chunks of what little free time I've had so far this month. While I'm enjoying both of them just fine, I don't feel compelled to write anything about either of them (although I did come close to penning a rant about the impasse I reached towards the end of Chapter II of The Witcher, but don't worry, I'm over it now).
But today is Valentine's Day. A day dedicated to celebrating love and commitment in all its forms. So, I thought, what better way to celebrate this amorous occasion than by breaking up with a ton of games and forever eradicating them from my towering Pile of Shame?
Regular followers of the blog will recall that I did something similar to this in the run-up to Backlogtober, my ill-advised (and yet somehow successful) effort to blow through as many unbeaten games as possible last October. This latest effort has been inspired to some degree by fellow Giant Bomb user @phishyphishy, whose Backlog 365 blog initiative is seeing him work through his own mound of unfinished titles one game at a time and determining which games to shelve for a later play-date, and which ones to retire from his backlog forever. It's a really cool little series that I recommend you check out, and perhaps even offer the duder some support by way of a follow or some supportive comments.
I've stuck with the same selection process that I used last time, which basically involves me looking my entire Pile of Shame up and down and asking myself one simple question - "do I really want to play this video game?" Last time I did this I was able to excise eleven games from my backlog in one fell swoop, and I've tried to be even more ruthless this time around. The resulting casualties this time number a whopping twenty-seven titles. Below is a cross-section of the games that didn't make the cut this time (their titles are in bold font), along with some of the reasons why:
Click Off And Die
Guess I won't be spending any time in hand-drawn Paris after all
I own a lot of point-and-click adventure games that I've never played. I vowed to delve deeper into the genre some years back, following positive experiences with the remastered version of The Secret of Monkey Island and Telltale's first season of Sam & Max. I continue to enjoy point-and-click games, but it's time to face facts and admit that I own more of the damn things than I'll ever play. That's why I'm using this opportunity to say goodbye to some of them, including the charming-yet-derivative Jolly Rover, and archaic LucasArts classics LOOM and The Dig. By far the most difficult ones to say goodbye to are the first three Broken Sword games, The Shadow of the Templars, The Smoking Mirror and The Sleeping Dragon. They seem like well-made adventure games and I know they're revered by the gaming community, but next to more recent titles like Telltale's Sam & Max (which I still have two more seasons to get through) and Double Fine's Broken Age, I can't see myself prioritising them, and so I'm cutting my ties.
Past Their Prime
The only error I see is this game still on my Pile of Shame
As a self-professed collector of video games, there are a number of titles that I've picked up over the years due to their perceived historical value to the medium as a whole. Unfortunately, that cultural significance often does little to mask the fact that these games just aren't a whole lot of fun to play any more. Games that fall into this category include the Western-themed GUN, World War II FPS Medal of Honor Underground and open-world destruct-a-thon Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction, all games that don't really have a justified place on my list in a world that's seen the likes of Red Dead Redemption, Call of Duty 4, and Just Cause 2 improve on all their respective mechanics. Also falling into this category are Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, one of the series' few mis-steps that hasn't aged well at all, and Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2, games that may have turned heads on the Dreamcast back in the day but feel nigh unplayable fifteen years after the fact.
Why Have Cotton...
Who needs Assassin's Creed on PSP when there's still Black Flag to be played?
...when you can have silk? It's a question that has puzzled humanity (and more specifically those in charge of marketing campaigns for chocolate bars) for many years. In this context, I'm talking about games I own that do something well, but not as well as other games that are already on my list. Things like Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines and Assassin's Creed Liberation HD, games that are impressive in light of successfully translating the franchise to handheld platforms, but probably aren't worth playing over any of the main series titles. Or Icewind Dale, Icewind Dale II and The Temple of Elemental Evil, all perfectly serviceable D&D-based computer RPGs that nonetheless feel obsolete on a list that also contains both Baldur's Gate titles. Other games in this category include Prototype, a game that feels like it's been called "the poor man's inFamous" since before either of them even came out, and Perfect Dark Zero, an all-style, no-substance first-person shooter that I'd struggle to prioritise over the likes of Crysis and Far Cry 3.
Indie Gone Gone
I wanted to like Half-Minute Hero, but something about it didn't meet my expectations
We've all done it, right? I'm talking about buying critically acclaimed games to support their indie developers, but with a laissez-faire attitude to actually playing those games. For me the biggest offender here is perhaps FTL: Faster Than Light, a game I bought based on reviews and public reception, all the while knowing full well that I don't particularly enjoy roguelikes and would likely never play it. Other games listed under this heading include Half-Minute Hero: Super Mega Neo Climax and Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale, games built around concepts I really admire but with execution I just couldn't warm to, and Toki Tori, a charming puzzler that I had my fill of years ago and have never really had any intention of returning to.
And The Rest
He's a wise-cracking suit-wearing zombie-brain-guy-thing... Nope, I don't know either
A handful of tonight's cuts don't fit comfortably into any of the pigeonholes above, and so must appear in this dedicated section of miscellany. First up is Dead Head Fred, a PSP game I bought on recommendation from former Giant Bomb user Jayge (anyone besides me remember that duder?), but which unfortunately didn't grab me in the hour or so I spent with it one afternoon last year. Despite there being several Japanese RPGs of arguably average quality on my Pile of Shame, Chaos Rings and Rune Factory: Oceans are the ones most associable with mediocrity, and thus the ones I feel most comfortable about letting go. Finally, Wasteland 2 seems like an awesome post-apocalyptic tactical RPG, but it's time for me to face facts and admit that this laptop is never going to run it, not in a whole year of Sundays.
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So that's the results of my latest hard look at my Pile of Shame. This cull takes the total down from one hundred and eighty-seven (187) titles to a comfortable, round one hundred and sixty (160) remaining games. Don't get me wrong, that's still a shit-ton of unfinished video gamery right there, but it's mighty satisfying to see that number a little smaller than it was this morning. I know I could have cut even more games, and spent a long time thinking about some titles I was on the fence with, but ultimately decided that twenty-seven is a pretty substantial cull already (around fifteen per cent of my total backlog, all told). There's nothing stopping me from coming back and reassessing the lists to make further cuts at a later date, and I may end doing just that at some point in the future.
As always, thanks a lot for reading. I apologise for the delay in writing anything since my Stranger's Wrath blog a few weeks back. Hopefully whatever goes up here next will be something a bit more interesting and insightful. Until then, feel free to sound off with your thoughts on my latest video game break-up in the comments below. Maybe there's something mentioned above that you don't think I should have cut, and you want to defend it. Or perhaps you've spotted something else on my Pile of Shame that you don't think is worth my time, and want to argue for its removal from the list. Whether you get involved in the conversation or not, I want to thank you all once again for taking some time out to read these ramblings. Take care guys, and I'll see you around.
Dan
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Currently playing - The Witcher: Enhanced Edition (PC)
Stranger's Wrath is the best Oddworld game, and a new candidate for one of my favourite games ever
Hey folks, Dan Kempster here with my first proper Giant Bomb blog entry of the year. I had hoped to put something together about Axiom Verge after making it my first completed game of 2016 last week, but I found myself struggling to articulate how I felt about it at any length. It's a pretty cool retro-throwback 2DMetroidvania game that subverts player expectations in some really interesting ways, and... that's about all I can muster. It's a shame, as I was expecting to have a lot to say about it. What I wasn't expecting at all was for my first blog of 2016 to be a close reading of a PlayStation 3HD remaster of an original Xbox game from 2005. Funny how these things turn out, isn't it?
I've spent the last week or so playing through Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath for the first time. As someone who considers themselves a stalwart fan of the Oddworld franchise, it was a bit of an embarrassing black-spot in my personal gaming history. Part of the reason it's taken so long to get around to is that even by the spectacular standards of oddness set by the series, Stranger's Wrath is something of a black sheep. It doesn't deal in the same logic-busting puzzle-platforming as its predecessors, instead serving up an experience that's part first-person shooter and part third-person action-platformer. It's a strange, almost unnatural hybrid, but it works better than you might expect, partly because in spite of this major mechanical shift it's still a quintessentially 'Oddworld' experience. In fact, now that I've had some time to mull it over, I think Stranger's Wrath might just be the most 'Oddworld' game in the franchise to date.
When I think of Oddworld, there are a few things that instantly come to mind. The franchise as a whole is known for its distinctive art style, blending vibrant natural environments with grimy industrial interiors and populating them with casts of inventively-designed, pseudo-alien creatures. It's also famous for its sense of humour, condensed into wonderful slapstick moments, pithy quips and ever-present fart jokes (the original Abe's Oddysee was perhaps the first video game ever to feature a button dedicated to bum-trumping).
Oddworld games have always pitted players against the ruthless march of industrialisation, and Stranger's Wrath is no different
But there's another major component within the Oddworld engine that I've always believed to be its driving force - a strong undercurrent of environmentalism and anti-consumerism. The games have ecosystems defined by hierarchies and interaction, such that even the most menacing wild creatures exhibit qualities that the player can empathise with and see value in. From Abe's Oddysee to Munch's, the one constant across the Oddworld games prior to Stranger's Wrath is that the protagonists are from simple, nature-loving, peaceful races, while the antagonists are industrial warmongers obsessed with raking in as much Moolah as possible. The Glukkons enslaved the Mudokons and forced them to work in their factories, to extract maximum profits from their various enterprises. They drove several wild species to near-extinction, desecrated ancient temples and burial grounds, and all in the name of making a fast buck. Abe's victories as he dismantles the Glukkons' villainous corporations carry the message that individuals can action change in business practices, especially when those companies are behaving in morally dubious ways.
Stranger makes for an interesting and surprisingly complex protagonist
These environmentalist tropes are initially nowhere to be seen in Stranger's Wrath. The first two thirds of the game avoid the issue altogether, in fact, using Stranger's morally ambiguous positioning within the game's world to focus instead on a completely different, much more personal struggle - his attempt to secure enough Moolah to pay for some life-saving surgery. Sure, on the surface, Stranger is a good guy. He's a bounty hunter, he spends his time tracking down and bagging the Outlaws terrorising the local towns and villages and generally making the area a safer place to be. But his motivations are selfish. He's not like Abe, taking on dangerous missions selflessly to try and save all the Mudokons. His drive is selfish, his pursuit is Moolah, and his reasoning is survival. In those respects, Stranger's really not all that different from the Glukkons we loved to hate in the first three Oddworld games.
It's only when the game reaches its turning point around six hours into its nine-hour running time that its focus becomes more traditionally 'Oddworldian', for lack of a better phrase. It's revealed that Stranger is actually a Steef, an ancient race of centaur-like creatures, who have protected another fish-like race called the Grubbs for generations. The Steef are almost extinct and their heads are in high demand as hunting trophies, which is why Stranger's so keen to get some Moolah together - so he can have his four legs turned into two and pass for a biped without fear of being (literally) head-hunted. At around the same time as this reveal, Stranger is rescued from captivity by a group of Grubbs, who take him back to their village and explain their situation to him - their village is under threat due to a prolonged drought, brought about after a dam was constructed by a ruthless businessman named Sekto. Stranger empathises with their plight and decides to embrace his role as a Steef, vowing to take the fight to Sekto Industries and restore the Grubbs to prosperity. From here on out the story is much more your typical Oddworld fare, as Stranger battles Sekto's Wolvark armies and finds a way to put a stop to his diabolical scheme.
Moolah (the Oddworld currency) is an important part of Stranger's Wrath to begin with...
What's particularly interesting to me is how Stranger's Wrath supplements this dramatic tonal shift with some equally drastic mechanical changes. Throughout the bulk of the game, while Stranger is gathering funds for his mysterious 'operation', Moolah is a core component of the gameplay. It's earned for completing bounty missions, it's found in chests, barrels and boxes all over Oddworld, and it can be spent in exchange for upgrades to Stranger's health, stamina and ammo. The player is actively encouraged to pursue Moolah above all else, to bring bounties back alive for a higher payout. Even the simple fact that NPCs drop a small amount of cash when attacked plays into this mindset, conditioning the player to behave in morally questionable ways in order to maximise their income.
...but ends up being completely irrelevant by the time it's over
When the story reaches its aforementioned turning point, though, Moolah disappears from the game almost entirely. Enemies no longer drop any when killed, and instead provide you with more ammo reserves when bountied. It ceases to be found in the destructible containers that litter the environment. Almost all of the upgrades invested in are removed, forcing the player to get along without them. The world of Stranger's Wrath suddenly becomes a world where Moolah is no longer king, no longer the be-all and end-all, and in its place is a drive to do right by the mild-mannered Grubbs by living up to Stranger's heritage and bringing down the industrial threat poised to consume this corner of Oddworld. It's an incredible piece of narrative reinforcement through gameplay, something so rarely seen in an industry where 'ludonarrative dissonance' has become a key buzzword. Not to mention a very brave decision on the part of the developers at Oddworld Inhabitants, who must have known that stripping one aspect of their core gameplay back rather than building upon it was a huge risk in an industry where incremental progression is king.
These narrative and mechanical shifts serve to do something that no previous Oddworld game ever really came close to, in my eyes - they give the protagonist a complete character arc. Abe and Munch, for all their clumsy faults, are always on the 'right' side of Oddworld's great conflict between nature and industry, and as a result their characters never really go anywhere. Stranger, on the other hand, develops from a self-centred bounty hunter, ashamed of his own lineage, into a proud Steef who puts the protection of other, weaker creatures above his own desires. His development is believable not just because it feels natural within the story, but also because the changes to Stranger's Wrath's core gameplay complement that development both tonally and mechanically. More than anything, though, I think it's the best route for his character to go - Stranger is the first protagonist in an Oddworld game with tangible physical power, and to see him use that power to help others is a much more fitting end to his character arc than the completion of his selfish pursuit of Moolah and self-preservation. It makes him my favourite Oddworld protagonist, and Stranger's Wrath my favourite Oddworld game, both by considerable margins.
I think that's going to do it for today, seeing as my brain is starting to feel a little fried. I hope I've managed to articulate exactly why I think Stranger's Wrath is such a special piece of game design, and why I think it's well worth playing whether you're an established fan of the Oddworld franchise or not. The PlayStation 3 version currently retails for £9.99 on PSN, and the PC version of the game is £6.99 on Steam (around $15 and $10 respectively), both very reasonable prices for one hell of a game that's aged remarkably well. I'm still undecided what my next video game adventure will be, but in the meantime I'm thinking of revisiting Assassin's Creed Syndicate on PS4 and trying to hit 100% synchronisation. Thanks very much for reading guys. Take care, and I'll see you around.
Hey folks, Dan Kempster here with the fifth and final part of My End of 2015 Awards. Apologies for it being a little on the late side - I had intended to get this written yesterday, but between work, New Year's celebrations and deliberating which games would actually make this list, I ran out of time and had to push it back to today. If you missed any of the first four parts, where I handed out a total of thirty-two individual acknowledgements to all the games I've played in the last twelve months, you can find them by following the links below:
This closing chapter of the ceremony is devoted to revealing my Top Ten Games of 2015. To forwarn you all, as with previous years, the criteria for inclusion on this list differ a bit from those used by most people. First and foremost, this list is open to almost every game I played over the course of 2015, irrespective of whether it was released this calendar year or not. The reason for this is simple – every year I only play a handful of newly-released games, meaning that imposing such a restriction on my list would limit it to no more than three or four titles. By opening it up to everything I've played this year, it means I'm able to put together a fully-populated list that also better represents all my gaming experiences from 2015.
The other main difference between this list and most others that you'll see is that there's no heirarchy here. I struggle when attempting to put one game over another on these things, and while it may be relatively easy to structure a top three, I find that the further away from the top spot I get, the ranking gets increasingly granular and arbitrary. For this reason, I decided to abandon any kind of ranked order for this list and put the games up in alphabetical order instead. It's bound to upset the number-crunching Metacritic crowd who categorically want a 'best game of 2015', but I just can't bring myself to do that. Sorry.
With those rules outlined, let's get to what you've all likely come here to find out – which games earned themselves a place on the list of my Top Ten Games of 2015! I won't be going into a ton of detail here, since I've already done so for all of these games in the individual awards handed out in the first four parts. It's been incredibly tough whittling it down from thirty-two titles to just ten, but I'm as happy as I'll ever be with the list below. Let's get started, shall we?
Assassin's Creed Syndicate earned its spot on this list for reminding me why I fell in love with this series in the first place. Assassin's Creed II really hit the spot, and while a lot of people go crazy over Brotherhood, that was where playing these games started to feel a bit like diminishing returns for me. Syndicate recaptured a lot of the magic I felt when I played ACII all the way back in 2011, delivering an enjoyable adventure in a beautifully rendered recreation of Victorian London and backing it up with some fun, if slightly formulaic, Assassin's Creed gameplay. The fact I'm eager to get back to this in the new year and pursue a Platinum Trophy should be testament enough to how much I enjoyed it. I'm really glad I skipped over everything from ACIII to Unity and went straight to this, because if I hadn't I don't think it would have had the same rejuvenating feel to it. Also, Evie Frye for life, yo.
Out of all of my wildly varied video game experiences throughout the craziness that was Backlogtober 2015, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is the game that I'll remember more than any other. Its consistently beautiful visuals and wordless narrative combine to deliver an adventure that feels like a fairy story in a world more brilliantly realised than perhaps any other I've explored this year. The basic level of interactivity it offers is supplemented by a fantastic, innovative control scheme that ends up playing into the narrative in a way that both impressed and moved me near its poignant end. Brothers is a title that demands very little of your time, but a great deal of your heart and soul, and the pay-off for that investment was one of my favourite video game experiences of this year.
I usually restrict these end-of-year top ten lists to new experiences, to give them a chance to shine a bit brighter, but I couldn't overlook the time I spent with the original Kingdom Hearts this year. Having played through it twice in quick succession, and very nearly three times (the Keyblade Chronicles is coming at some point, I promise you!), it was reassuring to see the action RPG gameplay the series is famous for has held up remarkably well, offering an experience that becomes significantly less button-mashy and more strategic on its higher difficulty level. Yes, the story is goofy (no, not that Goofy), but there's an endearing quality to its daft, campy Japanese-ness that's complemented by the established charm of its Disney characters and worlds, a balance that's been unfortunately off-centre in the subsequent games in the series that I also played this year. Kingdom Hearts is a great Japanese action RPG, and I look forward to revisiting it once again in the hopefully near future to get the Keyblade Chronicles officially underway.
My journey through the history of the Legend of Zelda franchise continues to throw up incredible experiences that I feel ashamed to have overlooked up until now. This year it was the turn of Oracle of Seasons, one of a pair of Zelda titles released for the Game Boy Color back in 2001. Much like its spiritual predecessor Link's Awakening, I found myself consistently surprised and impressed by how well Seasons translates the classic Zelda formula to the limitations of Nintendo's old handheld, all while somehow managing to add new elements rather than having to subtract existing ones. I enjoyed experimenting with new inventory items like the awesome magnet glove, and loved exploring the overworld of Holodrum. My only complaint is that it was a little on the easy side, something its counterpart Oracle of Ages supposedly addresses. I look forward to playing that this year and seeing how this two-parter wraps up.
I know I said earlier in this blog that I don't do ranked lists, but if you held me at gunpoint and forced me to pick one game over all the others that I played this year, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain would be it. It's the first game I've played in a long, long time that feels like a truly revolutionary leap forward for the industry. The innovations that The Phantom Pain brings to emergent open-world gameplay are almost too many to count – tight, smooth controls; advanced, adaptive enemy AI; sandbox-style environments that allow the player to approach their objectives from multiple angles; fluid mission design with objectives that change on the fly depending on the player's performance; and a varied toolset that rewards and encourages experimentation. It's got its fair share of flaws, most notably its story, which I think demonstrates the vestige of an interesting Metal Gear narrative delivered very poorly. The fact that those flaws can be so easily overlooked is a testament to just how fantastic the game portion of MGSV is. I put over a hundred hours into it in six weeks, and would happily do so all over again in a heartbeat.
2015 was the year that the Monster Hunter formula finally 'clicked' for me. After a handful of false starts in previous years, I at last got caught up in the satisfying gameplay loop that has claimed countless hours from so many other players. Once I got past Freedom Unite's vague tutorials, adjusted to the somewhat draconian mechanics and cleared all the rather dull early-game fetch quests, I found myself totally immersed in the experience of actually hunting monsters. The combat system rewards those patient enough to learn all its nuances, and each new quarry you face demands that you take the time to observe its attack patterns and discern its tells before charging in. When you do finally take down a creature, there's a primal sense of satisfaction in fighting it repeatedly, exploiting its weaknesses over and over again while earning monster parts that you can use to craft bigger and better weapons and armour. I'm really glad I persevered with Monster Hunter Freedom Unite, and I look forward to taking all I've learned and putting it into practice in 4 Ultimate in 2016.
It would be almost remiss of me to write an end-of-year awards blog without acknowledging a Pokémon game in some form or another. And yet, this very nearly didn't make the list at all – I really struggled to get into the third-generationremakes for reasons I couldn't quite put my finger on. All that changed with the Alpha Sapphire Egglocke, a Nuzlocke variant playthrough that saw me switching out caught Pokémon for eggs donated by some of my best Pokémon-playing friends. What could have been a run-of-the-mill Pokémon experience turned into a social event, where every new hatch was exciting and every untimely death broke my heart a little. The additional layer of attachment and commitment was enough to finally see me complete a whole lap of the Hoenn region, and cemented my time with Alpha Sapphire as one of my favourite RPG playthroughs of all time.
This is likely to be the most surprising entry on this list for most people, myself included, but there's no denying that the time I spent with Skate at the start of this year was the most fun I've had with a sports game in years. The realistic approach Skate brings to its presentation and gameplay mechanics really clicked with me, and I spent a big chunk of January just exploring San Vanelona looking for new lines to nail. It reminded me of the time I spent on a real skateboard back in the summer of 2003, hitting up the local skate park with a couple of friends and coming up with new ways to trick off the same old ramps and rails. Skate is far from perfect, with its imprecise analogue controls being its most obvious flaw, but the core foundation that its gameplay offers is so satisfying that I can overlook a lot of those problems and honour it on this list. I hope Skate 2 inspires more of the same feelings in me when I get around to playing it in 2016.
When the discussion about seminal pieces of video game history comes up, it's not uncommon to hear mention of classic titles like Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and Grand Theft Auto III. In the future, I honestly think Uncharted 2 will be held up in a similar way. Where all the aforementioned games revolutionised the medium with gameplay innovations that countless other titles have sought to mimic, Among Thieves is perhaps the first action game to flawlessly nail cinematic presentation and pacing, establishing a winning formula of combat, exploration, puzzle-solving, and epic set pieces that almost every big action game since has tried to emulate. Uncharted 2 is the moment where the Naughty Dogfranchise went from an action/adventure also-ran to setting the pace for everyone else to follow. It was without a shadow of a doubt deserving of its 2009 Game of the Year award on this very site, and still stands head and shoulders above the competition in 2015.
The first season of The Walking Dead will likely go down in history as Telltale's magnum opus, the title that took them from small-time developers of episodic adventure games and shot them into the big-time. What may be lost to history is that the secret best Telltale episodic adventure game is actually The Wolf Among Us. It's set in a unique and interesting universe, combining a cast of established fairy-tale characters with a noir-esque detective vibe and a neon-drenched 80s visual aesthetic. It boasts great writing that's consistent across the whole season and kept me guessing and second-guessing from beginning to end. It boasts a fantastic protagonist in Bigby Wolf, who's acted terrifically by Adam Harrington and accompanied by a colourful and interesting supporting cast of other Fables. Perhaps most crucially for me, its moral choices always felt consistent with the established character of Bigby – I never felt like I was being forced into a corner with any of the dialogue choices the game presented to me. I'd love to see Telltale revisit this IP in 2016 and bring us more of Bigby's exploits in Fabletown.
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There you have it folks, my Top Ten Games of 2015. It's been really tough choosing which games would make the cut this year, as I played so many brilliant ones, but I'm happy with the ones that I've chosen to highlight above. Commisserations and heart-felt shout-outs to all the games that didn't quite make this list, particularly to Batman: Arkham City and Super Mario 64 which only just missed out on spots in the top ten – like I said, it was incredibly tough making the calls this year. I think at this juncture all that's left for me to say is thanks very much for reading. It's been a great year for games. Here's hoping that 2016 is even better. Happy New Year folks! Take care, and I'll see you around.
Hey folks, Dan Kempster here, presenting the final batch of individual acknowledgements from My End of 2015 Awards. This one's taken slightly longer to put together than the first three parts (which you can find here, here and here, if you missed them), mainly because I've been at work all day and haven't had as much writing time as I've had the past few days. Worry not though, because I've still got a healthy helping of honours to hand out to eight more games before we're done. I'll begin with...
Freedom must have been a major buzzword in The Phantom Pain's dev team meetings
There's precious little I can say about Metal Gear Solid V that hasn't already been said better elsewhere. Everyone and their mother has poured glowing praise upon Kojima's latest (and final) Metal Gear game for its pioneering emergent stealth gameplay. For me personally, MGSV's greatest success lies in how it both encourages and rewards experimentation. Past games in the series have juxtaposed extensive inventories and toolkits with small, enclosed environments and unforgiving fail-states, an incongruous pairing where fear of the latter often discouraged experimenting with the former. Contrary to this, MGSV's open design means the player can approach any given task from multiple angles and with any number of potential strategies. Not only that, but the game almost never equates discovery with failure, providing multiple opportunities to complete mission objectives even after the alarm has sounded. This adds up to a game where experimenting with different loadouts and strategies is not only encouraged, but rewarded time and again. With its reactive enemy AI and the sheer wealth of options available, an infiltration that goes awry can produce moments of brilliance that feel just as rewarding as a successful 'perfect stealth' run. The Phantom Pain has changed the way I look at open-world action games forever, and whatever comes next has a lot to live up to.
'Splosion Man oozes its own unique cartoony charm, too
'Splosion Man felt like the anti-And Yet It Moves for me this year. I went into it fully prepared for another gimmicky 2D indie platformer I wouldn't enjoy, and came away from it feeling terrible for even having the nerve to think like that. While And Yet It Moves came across as a one-trick pony for relying too heavily on its world rotation mechanic, 'Splosion Man instead feels pure in its simplicity. Its physics model is floaty yet precise, making the simple act of playing feel satisfying and rewarding in a way that AYIM never did. Its level design is fantastic too, mixing up straight platforming levels with puzzle-solving, reflex-based challenges, timed sequences and even combat in the form of boss encounters. It's difficult, sometimes punishingly so, but never in a way that feels unfair, reminding me of my time with Super Meat Boy some five years ago. 'Splosion Man turned out to be a real sleeper hit for me this year, and one of the best 2D platformers I've played in recent times.
I can't think of any other game that looks like Zeno Clash. I like that.
I love weird video games. Weirdness is a by-product of imagination and creativity, a leap out of reality and into something strange and unrecognisable. The world of Zenozoik, setting for first-person brawler Zeno Clash, has weirdness in spades. It's the first time since my lengthy excursion to Morrowind five years ago that a game-world has captivated me with its completely alien design. That design works because its environments and characters feel cohesive and consistent with each other. The outlandish creatures that Ghat and Deadra meet along the way feel like they belong in the arid deserts and swampy marshes they call home, just as the crooked architecture of Halstedom feels like an appropriate base for Father-Mother and its many deformed children. It's this cohesion of design that makes Zenozoik feel like a believable place, and that believability is what drew me into the experience of playing Zeno Clash. I'm really keen to visit ACE Team's unique pseudo-neolithic world again, most likely in Zeno Clash 2, one day in the future.
Uncharted 2 certainly knows how to deliver a spectacle
Uncharted 2 was never going to have to do much more than its predecessor to impress me. Uncharted: Drake's Fortune was essentially an interactive Indiana Jones movie, and Among Thieves doing more of the same was absolutely fine by me. But instead of resting on their laurels, Uncharted 2 feels like Naughty Dog took Drake's Fortune and turned every single dial up to eleven. It looks better, it sounds better, it plays better, and the action sequences are several times bigger and exponentially better-scripted. What makes these set-pieces so memorable is the surprising amount of agency they typically feature, putting the player in the thick of the action while giving them the best possible view of it all. Of all the game's many cinematic set-pieces, my favourite is without a doubt the extended battle with the tank through a Tibetan mountain village, a sequence so perfectly paced and expertly directed that I'm confident I'll hold it in my personal pantheon of the greatest moments in video games for a long time to come. Here's hoping Uncharted 3 can continue following the same trend. Do they even make dials that go to twelve?
I loved BioShock Infinite unreservedly. Its incredible characters, mind-bending story and innovative shooter gameplay were all enough to earn it a well-deserved space on my (heavily truncated) Top Ten Games of 2013 list, as well as entry into my list of favourite FPS games ever. I've been meaning to play the Burial at Sea downloadable content for the game ever since it was announced, but I didn't actually get around to it until late this year. The two-part expansion, set primarily in Rapture just before the underwater city's imminent collapse, was a welcome opportunity to get reacquainted with Booker DeWitt and Elizabeth Comstock in a very different setting. Its story, easily its strongest suit, brings the whole series full-circle in a wonderfully comprehensive fashion that left me itching to boot up the original BioShock as soon as the credits stopped rolling. The gameplay of Infinite is largely intact too, although the restrictive environs of Rapture aren't as conducive to Skyhook combat as the open skies of Columbia. There's always a man, there's always a city, there's always a lighthouse, and there will always be my undying love for this game, in all its forms, in every dimension of the multiverse.
'Buying New Soul' Award for Revitalisation of a Stalled Franchise
It's a shame this is just a glitch, as I wouldn't mind if Jacob disappeared from the game entirely
After a lacklustre experience with Revelations last year, I was just about ready to give up on Assassin's Creed. I've heard so many conflicting things about ACIII that even though I'd bought copies of every game in the series up to Unity, I was thinking about cutting my losses and accepting that the franchise just wasn't ever going to revisit the fleeting brilliance of ACII. I never intended to buy AC Syndicate, but ended up choosing it as the best value option of several potential pack-ins with my new PlayStation 4 when I bought it last month. Victorian London turned out to be too much of a draw to ignore, and I jumped into the game with flagrant disregard for the franchise's chronology. Turns out that was probably the best thing I could have done. AC Syndicate avoids the diminishing returns of Brotherhood and Revelations with tight (if a little systemic) gameplay set in a beautiful rendition of London circa 1868, driven by at least one fantastic protagonist in Evie Frye, and showcased with some of the best mission design I've witnessed in the series. I'm still not sure if I'll be going back to the interim Assassin's Creed titles to fill out my experience with the franchise, but it's comforting to know that this year's instalment is one of the good ones.
The Alpha Sapphire Egglocke was an awesome experience that brought me and my friends together this autumn
Astute readers may have noticed that this award is the inverse of the award handed to Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light yesterday. That's because, while Guardian of Light was a co-operative game I played through solo, Pokémon Alpha Sapphire was a single-player game that I played with the involvement and support of some truly great friends. Having struggled to get over the 'hump' of playing Pokémon Omega Ruby ever since its release in November last year, I instead turned my attention to the Alpha Sapphire version and constructed a scheme to see me through the third-generation remakes in the form of an Egglocke challenge. Some of my best friends donated eggs to the cause, and from the start of August right through until last week, I journeyed through the Hoenn region using Pokémon that those friends had bestowed upon me. It was a long adventure, filled with peril and more than a few untimely deaths, but the entire thing was a blast. I recorded every important moment, every hatched egg and every tough battle, and shared them with my friends, turning the whole Egglocke into a crazy social event. I'm insanely grateful to Duncan, Jon, Tom, Matt, Dean and Jack for helping me to overcome my “gamer's block” with Pokémon ORAS, and I can't wait to continue the social experience when we revive our competitive Pokémon league in 2016.
Ratchet's impressive arsenal of upgradeable, customisable weaponry is one of the reasons I love R&C2 so much
Alright, so technically I haven't finished Ratchet & Clank 2 yet at the time of writing this, but I'm so close I can practically smell the Protopet... or maybe that's just the Plumber... Anyway, the point is, I should have this HD remaster of the Lombax and robot duo's second outing wrapped up before the clock strikes midnight tomorrow. It's been a really fun journey through what I've long considered to be my favourite of the PS2-era Ratchet & Clank games, and a big part of that is down to its awesome arsenal of completely bonkers weaponry. From the conventional (the rifle-like Lancer and shotgun-esque Blitz Gun) to the more surreal (Sheepinator, anyone?), Locked & Loaded's weapons roster is full of memorable guns and helpful support gadgets, all of which feel great to use. It's also the first Ratchet & Clank game to feature a proper weapon upgrade system, featuring 'levelled-up' versions of every gun that unlock through persistent use and additional gun mods that can be bought with rare Platinum Bolts, which in turn provides a great incentive to experiment with every weapon. That's why I love the weapons in this game so much, and why I feel obliged to acknowledge them in these awards.
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Here ends the individual awards portion of My End of 2015 Awards. From these thirty-two titles, I'm now tasked with the difficult responsibility of whittling the whole list down to the ten experiences that best define my year from a game-playing standpoint. These Top Ten Games of 2015 will be decorated even further in the fifth and final part of these awards, due for release tomorrow. Looks like I've got some thinking to do. Until then, thanks very much for reading guys. Take care, and I'll see you around.
Hey folks, Dan Kempster here, bringing you the third part of My End of 2015 Awards, my own take on the Game of the Year proceedings currently underway here on Giant Bomb. If you're not aware of the specifics of these awards, or you've missed any of the last sixteen individual acknowledgements, you can find Part One here and Part Two here. Today we reach the midway point of the ceremony, and give out another set of gongs to eight more of the games I played this year, starting with...
Ground Zeroes served as an incredible insight of what to expect from The Phantom Pain
I revisited Ground Zeroes just before the release of The Phantom Pain, mainly to re-familiarise myself with the new gameplay mechanics and feel of the controls so I'd have an easier time getting started with Big Boss' latest mission. Playing through the Ground Zeroes mission on Hard difficulty in a single sitting was a great refresher in that respect, but it also highlighted what an impressive technical feat the Fox engine is. The lighting, the animation, the enemies' behavioural AI – everything within Ground Zeroes' self-contained ecosystem is phenomenally advanced, light-years ahead of anything that Metal Gear Solid 4 achieved seven years ago. As someone who played both Ground Zeroes and The Phantom Pain on last-generation hardware, to see such a huge leap within the lifespan of a single console almost defied belief. Ground Zeroes is a captivating vertical slice of the gameplay, engine and systems that appear in The Phantom Pain, and a stunning reminder of what the PS3 and Xbox 360 are still capable of.
The unique control scheme of Brothers is largely successful, and even has an impact on the story
I don't talk about it much, but I'm a big champion of games that do something out of the ordinary with their control scheme. In this modern world of homogeneously controlling shooters where all the same functions are mapped to the same buttons, it's sometimes refreshing to see a game go against the grain and try something new. This is part of the reason why I loved Brothers so much, because it attempts something novel by mapping each brother to an opposite side of the controller. It's a simple conceit that establishes a sense of co-operative teamwork within a single-player game. It worked well for the most part too, only causing problems when the brothers ended up on the opposite side of the screen to their side of the control pad and my capacity for lateral thinking couldn't keep up. Without a doubt the best moment associated with this unique control scheme comes near the end of the game, when the player effectively controls the spirit of the dead older brother in order to encourage the living younger brother to keep going. It's a poignant moment that drives home a touching message through mechanics alone, and that's why it will stay with me more than any other moment from Brothers.
Pokémon Snap encourages experimentation, something most on-rails games stay well away from
I don't play a lot of 'on-rails' games. I find the lack of avatar agency restricting, and quickly tire of the typically limited options they present to the player (shoot, duck, reload and shoot some more being the standard repertoire). Going into Pokémon Snap, I knew this was going to be a very different on-rails experience, if for no other reason than the fact you're equipped with a camera rather than a gun. What I wasn't expecting was how Pokémon Snap subverts the perceived handicap of its on-rails premise, encouraging the player to use their limited agency to solve puzzles within its environments, thereby facilitating better photo opportunities and more points from Professor Oak. It's a little thing that goes a long way, nurturing an exploratory approach within the player rather than simply asking them to point and shoot. I ended up enjoying Pokémon Snap a lot more than I was expecting it to, and found myself longing to see its design philosophies applied to a potential sequel somewhere down the line.
The new Promethean enemies and their arsenal of weaponry just aren't different enough to feel like a significant departure
When I gave Halo 3a similarly-named award for an identical accolade back in 2012, I stressed that it wasn't intended in a derogatory or condescending manner. The same is true for Halo 4 this year, but it's not an overtly positive proclamation either. I think a big part of that comes from the different expectations associated with each game. Halo 3 was the concluding chapter in an established trilogy, and as such there were preconceived notions of what that game would be – notions that it ultimately delivered on, at least in my opinion. Halo 4 may well be part of the same franchise, but it's also the beginning of a whole new story arc, with a new developer at the helm. That's why I went into it expecting something a little different, and why I was slightly disappointed when it failed to deliver on that front. Yes, the shooting still feels great, the enemy AI still puts up a challenging fight, and solving each 'combat puzzle' is still damn rewarding. But by sticking to those established conventions, Halo 4 comes off as a little too safe. Even the new Promethean enemies and weapons feel like re-skins of existing archetypes rather than bona fide new additions to the Halo universe. Halo 4 looks, plays and feels like a Halo game, and that's about all I can say of it. No more, no less. And for the first time in my history with the franchise, that's not a wholly good thing.
Out of all the games I played this year, And Yet It Moves stands out as one of the very few that I downright didn't enjoy. While that's partly due to its annoying ambient soundtrack and one-note mechanics, my lasting memory of the few hours I spent with the game is of countless unwarranted deaths due to the seemingly arbitrary behaviour of its physics model. Sometimes the hand-drawn avatar will land unscathed from what seems like a great height, while at others an apparently minor drop will be enough to dash him to pieces on the sketchbook ground below. Matters aren't helped by the bizarre way And Yet It Moves handles momentum, which shifts with the orientation of the world rather than remaining constant relative to the position of the player character. Oh, and to top it all off, while the world is in rotation, the player character freezes while the environment and all its moving pieces and temporary platforms continue to animate. All this makes some of the game's more acrobatic feats of platforming almost impossible to judge, and in turn results in even more frustrating deaths at the bottom of an unexpectedly lengthy descent.
'Going Mobile' Award for Best Game Played on a Cellphone
Since there aren't any screenshots of Lara Croft Go in the Giant Bomb database, you'll have to make do with this app icon
I don't do much gaming on my mobile phone. Partly because it's a Windows Phone and there's very little worth playing on the app store, and partly because I'm not a big fan of endless runners or match-three puzzle games. But when my entire collection of video games was held hostage by a rogue spider back in the middle of October, I found myself turning to my mobile in the hopes of scratching my gaming itch. The much needed salve came in the form of Lara Croft Go, a game that caught my attention due to Giant Bomb's then-recent Quick Look and my interrupted progress through Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light. What was supposed to be a temporary distraction ended up being a really fun experience in its own right, its devious turn-based puzzles taxing my brain just enough to keep me stimulated until I could reclaim my gaming corner from the arachnid menace.
'Happy Alone' Award for Best Single-Player Experience in a Co-Operative Game
Guardian of Light was perfectly playable solo, but doing so felt like I was missing out on something
When Crystal Dynamics released Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light back in 2010, I remember being surprised that they were reluctant to put the Tomb Raider name on it. Now, having played it some five years after the fact, I can understand why they made that decision. I associate the Tomb Raider series with a foreboding sense of solitude and isolation that Guardian of Light just doesn't have. Instead, it embraces the novel concept of co-operative tomb raiding, encouraging players to work together to overcome its many devious traps while at the same time pitting them against one another with a smorgasbord of challenges to complete, high scores to beat and online leaderboards to climb. I feel like I missed out on some of what Guardian of Light has to offer by playing it alone, because although it's still a perfectly serviceable single-player experience, I didn't get caught up in that thrill of solving puzzles together while simultaneously competing for that new high score. If I ever pick up Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris on PS4, I'll make sure to seek out a friend or two to play it with.
Yep, those are definitely zombies, no doubt about it
I feel very conflicted about the second season of Telltale's The Walking Dead. It has some truly great moments scattered throughout its five-episode run, and the very best of those moments might even be better than anything that happened in Season One. Clementine is a brilliantly characterised protagonist, ostensibly still a child but forced to grow up far too soon in the horrific circumstances around her. But for every great thing I say about TWD2, there's something not-so-great that holds it back. Its supporting cast isn't as strong as the first season's, and feels far too expendable, with many of them becoming zombie-fodder before the player gets a proper chance to empathise with them. The season's overarching story peaks in the third episode and has nowhere to go from there but down, although it recovers spectacularly at the very end. The first season of The Walking Dead was the epitome of bottled lightning, and while Telltale have tried valiantly to match it, that was always going to be a big ask, and TWD2 was inevitably going to fall short. The one thing I can say with absolute certainty is that there are zombies in this game. Lots and lots of zombies. Nobody's going to argue with me about that.
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Twenty-four individual awards have now been presented, leaving just eight more to hand out in tomorrow's fourth part of My End of 2015 Awards. I hope you'll join me to find out what those awards are, and which games they'll be awarded to. Until then, thanks very much for reading guys. Take care, and I'll see you around.
Hey folks, Dan Kempster here, back with another batch of shiny ceremonial trinkets to hand out in this, the second part of My End of 2015 Awards. If you missed yesterday's inaugural entry, which outlines the premise of these awards before handing out the first eight individual acknowledgements, you can find it by following this link. To the rest of you, let's get cracking with the next batch of honours, beginning with...
"Good point! Keep talkin'!" No, Jack, please don't...
The original Far Cry was a bit of a slow burn for me. Years after playing through and adoring Far Cry 2, faults and all, it took four attempts and a change of platform to finally make it all the way through its predecessor. While I appreciated the open environments and the emergent feel they award to the gunfights (something that I assume is a series hallmark from my experience with the sequel), I'll probably remember Far Cry more for its 'distinctive' voice-work. Its entire cast, from protagonist Jack Carver to villainous mastermind Krieger, deliver their over-acted lines with so much ham that it distracts from the game's story beats, reducing the already B-movie-esque plot into something that verges on laughable. Even now, eight months after beating the game, I'm not entirely sure if the terrible dialogue and delivery were intentional à la Just Cause 2, or an unfortunate by-product of Crytek throwing all their budget at the graphics division and leaving peanuts to pay for VO. Whatever the reason, it'll be those not-so-dulcet tones that I think of when remembering Far Cry in years to come.
'Come Back Around' Award for Being Better the Second Time Through
It may not be the best Final Fantasy, but it's better than I remembered it being
I decided to replay Final Fantasy XIII and XIII-2 to recap the story in preparation to play through Lightning Returns. While I didn't make it onto either of the sequels this year, I did have a surprising amount of fun revisiting what may well be the most divisive game in the core Final Fantasy series. My first playthrough of FFXIII was characterised by frequent and lengthy visits to the in-game datalog to bust its confusing jargon and make better sense of the combat system's many nuances. Going in the second time, with all of that knowledge already established, meant I could enjoy the game at a quicker pace, with far fewer interruptions. While the characters and melodramatic tone of the story still didn't resonate much with me, playing the game at around the time of the General Election here in the UK meant the allegorical anti-immigration and racism came through a lot stronger, and the actual beats of the story still proved to be interesting even if their delivery left a little to be desired. Perhaps the most telling piece of evidence that I enjoyed FFXIII more the second time around was the amount of time I ended up sinking into its side quests and additional content, something I still plan to revisit and wrap up in early 2016.
Anyone else suffering from a real strong sense of déjà-vu right now?
Let's get one thing straight before I elaborate on this award – I didn't go into Re:Chain of Memories expecting to see a ton of brand new stuff. It would be unfair to expect a game which is ostensibly all about re-treading old ground not to re-hash a ton of existing art assets from its predecessor. I think the problem I had with Re:Chain of Memories is two-fold, and in fairness, not entirely its own fault. First and foremost, I went into the game hot off two extensive playthroughs of the original Kingdom Hearts. I'd already spent almost a hundred hours exploring these worlds and meeting these characters, and seeing them all again in what are mostly re-tellings of their stories from the previous game threatened to burn me out even further. Second (and I can only blame the game itself for this), Re:Chain of Memories not only recycles assets and content from the original Kingdom Hearts, but also recycles its own assets and content through its second half! Taking place in the same castle, and through the same worlds as Sora's story, Riku's 'Reverse/Rebirth' mode ended up being the icing on a cake that I'd already eaten far too much of by that point, and almost burned me out on the Kingdom Hearts franchise completely.
Arkham City is a great game, but I feel like it loses something in its transition to an open-world format
Batman: Arkham Asylum was one of my own personal sleeper hits when I played through it all the way back in 2012. As someone with no investment in the Batman universe, I went in reluctantly and emerged pleasantly surprised. The fantastic combat mechanics, tense stealth sequences and gadget-focused exploration all made Arkham Asylum a winner for me, and probably would have done even without the Batman trappings. More than anything, though, it was the incredibly tight focus and brilliant pace of Asylum that made an indelible mark on me. The game's world is brilliantly designed, encouraging exploration within a linearly-driven narrative by gating player progression through the acquisition of new gadgets in a Metroidvania style. While Arkham City retains a lot of these design ethics, and improves upon several of them in the process, their transposition into an open game-world didn't sit right with me. Exploring the city felt aimless rather than purposeful, and the game lost a little bit of its impact and focus as a result. That's why, even though most of Arkham City's iterative improvements to its mechanics result in a better gameplay experience, I can't in good conscience rank it above its progenitor.
The new translation, redrawn sprite art and new soundtrack arrangements all make Final Fantasy IV on PSP a joy to play
Before this year, the only version of Final Fantasy IV I'd played was the PlayStation port of the original Super Nintendo version, released in the UK as part of the Final Fantasy Anthology collection. While the game was playable, it was hindered in some frustrating ways, including painfully long initial load times and a lack of clarity in the names of inventory items. The PSP remaster of Final Fantasy IV, included in the Complete Collection package, fixes both of these quibbles thanks to its data install feature and completely rewritten translation, negating load times completely and bringing some much needed lucidity to the item screen. On top of that, it gives the whole game a fresh lick of paint by way of its completely redrawn sprite art and orchestral arrangements of the original soundtrack, both of which really serve to enhance the experience of playing through this classic Japanese RPG. If you only ever play one version of Final Fantasy IV, I'd advise you to make it this one.
'Too Much Blood' Award for Most Gratuitous Use of Violence and Gore
I'm not averse to a bit of bloodshed in my video games. I've been a follower of the God of War series since the original game was released back in 2005, and my favourite thing about the franchise is its epic, brutal interpretation of the Greek mythology that it's rooted in. The first two games, somewhat limited by the power of the PlayStation 2, were nonetheless incredibly grand spectacles at the time, marrying terrifying monster design with a visceral, bloody combat engine to create some truly memorable and gory encounters. God of War III, which I played for the first time ever this year, ramps up both the scale and the body count, using the PS3's extra horsepower to sometimes shocking effect in sequences that might best be described as verging on the 'torture porn' end of the violence spectrum. Disembowelling Centaurs, tearing off the head of a god with his bare hands and smashing a rival warrior's face into an unrecognisable bloody pulp are just some of Kratos' most memorable displays of violence in this final chapter of his story. The Ghost of Sparta's body even becomes noticeably drenched in the red stuff in the thick of battle, a telling reminder of all the blood he's spilled. God of War III was still a great action game, but I felt like its obsession with violence overshadowed that fact a little at times.
Well begun is only half-done, and it appears I've still got a lot of Zelda left to play
I've spent a lot of time in recent years trying to fill the gaps in my history with the Legend of Zelda franchise. Last year I made it through Link's Awakening, and the year before that I tackled both The Minish Cap and A Link Between Worlds. This year it was the turn of Oracle of Seasons, one of two twinned 2D Zelda adventures released for the Game Boy Color in 2001. I opted for Seasons first on the advice of a friend, who said that it made sense to tackle the easier game before the harder one, Ages being the more difficult of the two. It's a great self-contained little Zelda adventure, with some cool new inventory items and a handful of truly memorable boss encounters. But even though it runs for the full eight-dungeon series standard, Seasons still doesn't feel like a complete Zelda game, even after defeating the powerful Onox in his dragon form and watching the credits roll. The cliffhanger ending featuring Koume and Kotake and the completion code at the game's end all point to a continuation (and true conclusion) of the story taking place in Ages. I plan to find out exactly how that goes, and how the whole saga finally ends, when I play through Ages in 2016.
So much drifting... Someone, please, make the drifting stop...
My relationship with most racing games would perhaps best be described as 'abusive'. It always starts out well, but before too long I start to see their true colours, typically as an overly-repetitive gameplay loop due to a dearth of tracks or mode options, and decide to bail out. Every time I tell myself I've learned my lesson, and yet I keep coming back time and again, thinking things will be different while knowing in my heart of hearts that I'm doomed to the same fate. Such was the story of my time with Codemasters' GRID, a game I decided to give a second chance following a rare positive experience with Colin McRae: DiRT a few years ago. I quickly fell in love with its fast, loose driving model and fresh, season-structured take on career progression. The cracks soon started to show though, through the usual lack of unique race locations and some truly God-awful attempts to appeal to the Fast & Furious crowd with Drift and Touge events that just didn't excite me. It was an on-off relationship that lasted about three months, and eventually saw me reach the top tier of career events before I admitted to myself that I just couldn't do this any more. I'm sorry GRID, but it was never going to work out between us.
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It's here that I must bring today's proceedings to an end. We've reached the halfway point of the individual awards, with sixteen given and sixteen still to present. Join me tomorrow in the third part of My End of 2015 Awards, when I'll be handing out another eight gongs to games I beat this year. Thanks very much for reading guys, take care and I'll see you around.
Hey folks, Dan Kempster here. I hope you've all had a pleasant, relaxing Christmas. I wish I could say I had, but I didn't. I won't go into any explicit detail, as this isn't really the place, but I'd say it's been my least favourite Christmas on record. That's not to say it was wholly terrible, mind – I received some genuinely lovely, thoughtful gifts, and my mum's Christmas dinner was as delicious as always. But, now that the glitter has settled and the festive celebrations begin to make way for that awkward seven-day lull between Christmas and the New Year, we as players of video games collectively turn our attention to sites like Giant Bomb for their annual Game of the Year awards, and all the deliberations that inevitably come with them. Some of us even participate in the discussion, venturing our own Game of the Year nominations. That, duders and duderettes, is what I have come here to do today, by way of a little five-day blogging extravaganza that I like to call 'My End of 2015 Awards'.
For the uninitiated, this is how My End of 2015 Awards will pan out. Parts One through Four, released daily from the 27th to the 30th of December, will consist of me handing out individual awards to every game I've beaten over the course of 2015 – eight on each day, and thirty-two in total. Each award is named for a song from my list of personal favourites, and will recognise a particular strength or weakness that I identified within a game while playing it, highlighting my lasting memories of the titles I devoted myself to this year. On New Year's Eve, Part Five will acknowledge my own personal top ten games that I played this calendar year, in no heirarchical order and (contrary to Game of the Year conventions) with no distinct 'winner'.
Now, if everyone is sitting comfortably, I'll begin with the first eight individual awards...
Get out of those vents, Lara! You're not Solid Snake!
I've been a fan of Tomb Raider since way before Crystal Dynamics successfully rebooted the franchise to relevance a couple of years back. I've been adventuring with Lara Croft since the days of the original PlayStation, and as a result I can overlook a lot of the shortcomings of the first five CORE-developed titles. I even think the original Tomb Raider and The Last Revelation stand up as legitimately great games, in spite of their tank controls and draconian puzzle design. But even coming back to it from this perspective, it was difficult to find anything redeeming in the experience of playing Lara's final PS1 outing, Tomb Raider Chronicles. Its multi-scenario premise feels schizophrenic rather than varied, with only the first of its four distinct chapters feeling like a bona fide Tomb Raider game. The others come off as poor imitations of other contemporary franchises as they try to emulate Silent Hill's claustrophobic horror, or Metal Gear Solid's high-tech stealth infiltration. This mish-mash of styles, coupled with lazy presentation and some incredibly frustrating late-game bugs, all served to put Chronicles on the penultimate rung of my Tomb Raider ladder, just above the hot mess that was The Angel of Darkness.
Finally nailing a line is one of Skate's most rewarding pay-offs
It's been a long time since I lost myself in a video game about skateboarding. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 was the last time it truly happened – I spent a fair amount of time dabbling with Underground due to the inclusion of goals in its Park Creator mode, but I never sank the scores of hours into it that THPS4 demanded of me. That's probably why I was so surprised when Skate came along this year, and blew my preconceived notions of what a skateboarding game should be completely out of the water. By superseding Tony Hawk's tired old combo-heavy, animation-based model of skating with a much more physics-based approach focused on finding and nailing lines, Skate injected a healthy dose of realism into the genre that I didn't even know I wanted until I was already absorbed by it. I spent hours of the early part of 2015 just skating around San Vanelona, looking for new areas to skate and new potential lines to carve up. The learning curve is steep, and the imprecision of the analogue controls can be frustrating, but when Skate works and flows as it should, the feeling of finally nailing a new line is a better rush than any high score in Tony Hawk's could ever be.
Kingdom Hearts oozes so much saccharine charm that it's not hard to sit through it twice in a row
Technically the quality of Kingdom Hearts wasn't what prompted me to embark on two extensive playthroughs of the game almost back-to-back. My second journey through the original cross-over project between Squaresoft (now Square-Enix) and Disney was prompted by my sister witnessing me finishing my first comprehensive run-through and wanting to know what the game was all about. Consequently, no sooner had I sealed the door to darkness than I found it open once more, and this time I'd have to close it in the company of my curious younger sibling. The reason this game gets this award is that at no point in my second playthrough did I ever feel fatigued or burned out on the combat, which demands a surprising amount of skill and strategy on the game's Proud difficulty level. Nor did I tire of its colourful environments or its enjoyable-yet-nonsensical narrative. Admittedly this wasn't true of my attempted third playthrough, which would've seen me start a brand new serial blog project here on the site, but the fact the game was able to retain most of its charm through two consecutive playthroughs is pretty commendable, and that's what this award recognises.
Alpha Protocol promised Mass Effect crossed with spy fiction, but failed to deliver in a lot of important areas
I wasn't expecting much going into Alpha Protocol, probably because of the lukewarm critical reception it received on its release back in 2010. Nonetheless, the idea of James Bond meets Mass Effect was enough to encourage me to give it a chance this year, and do you know what? There are a lot of things it does really well, particularly with regards to the writing and characters (something that probably shouldn't have come as a shock to me given my experience with developer Obsidian's other big 2010 release, Fallout: New Vegas). Unfortunately, that's about where the train of praise stops for me. The game doesn't look great, with stiff animations and the texture pop-in I've come to expect from games running on Unreal Engine 3. The combat isn't very enjoyable either, ranging from acceptably functional to frustratingly inadequate. I might have been able to overlook the shoddy fighting were it not for the fact that the game seems to force you into it at every opportunity, especially in its closing chapters. It would have been nice to have more options to avoid combat through dialogue, but even though I specced my Agent Thorton pretty heavily towards the suave and charismatic end of the spectrum, I was still forced into shoot-outs with bullet-spongy “bosses” far more often than I would have liked. Alpha Protocol is a great foundation for a role-playing spy thriller, and with some more refinement of its mechanics and presentation, it might have been a great game in its own right. Unfortunately, when I look back on it, all I remember is squandered potential for something much better than the actual product.
Bigby is a great character and I loved seeing his story develop through The Wolf Among Us
I had no prior knowledge of the Fables graphic novels going into The Wolf Among Us, but it's fair to say I had at least some level of expectation given my experience with the first season of The Walking Dead back in 2013. By the end of its five-episode run, those expectations had been exceeded in just about every way possible. The Wolf Among Us takes place in a fascinating fictional universe, where corruptions of well-known fairy tales coexist in a real-world setting, sprinkled with touches of 80s neon and film noir detective fiction. It's a wonderful mish-mash of styles and influences that come together to create something especially memorable. The characters that inhabit this world, already familiar to many players by way of their original source material, are easy to recognise and identify with, and nowhere more so than with protagonist Bigby Wolf. His brilliantly written and delivered dialogue serve to create a character who remains consistent and relatable, no matter which choices the player makes. The Wolf Among Us is one of Telltale's finest hours, perhaps even better than the first season of The Walking Dead, and I really hope we'll see a continuation of Bigby and Snow's story some time in 2016.
Every enemy in Monster Hunter Freedom Unite offers a new, unique challenge to overcome
It took a while for the gamplay loop of the Monster Hunter series to click for me. That magical moment finally happened earlier this year when I first encountered the mighty Yian Kut-Ku in Freedom Unite on my PSP. With my limited knowledge of the game's mechanics, it completely flattened me on my first couple of attempts, but unlike my earlier efforts to get into the game, I refused to admit defeat. I went away and did some grinding against weaker monsters, harvesting hides and claws and teeth to improve my weapon and armour. Better equipped, I returned to the Kut-Ku and spent some time just observing it, learning its movements and attack patterns, looking out for openings to land charge-strikes and draw-strikes with my greatsword. I used those observations to formulate a plan of attack, put it into action, and managed to bring down the Kut-Ku in just a couple of tries. This is just one story out of dozens from my time with the game, and all of them serve to make the same point – that every new monster encounter is its own unique, memorable and exhilarating challenge.
Gorgeous environments? Check. Large monsters? Check. Emotional attachment? Check.
Alright, so this isn't actually a Team ICO game, but it might as well be. Developed by indie company Minority Media, Papo & Yo borrows a lot of elements from both ICO and Shadow of the Colossus that leave it feeling like a reverential homage to the work of Fumito Ueda and his team. It's set in a world characterised by environments that are at once exquisitely detailed and yet somehow bleak and sparse. It's an adventure platformer with an emphasis on solving environmental puzzles in order to progress. There are many elements of escort missions in its game design, particularly in protagonist Quico's interactions with Monster, who evokes both the tranquil presence of Yorda when placid, and the fearsome threat of the Colossi when enraged. It's a poignant allegorical tale that tugs on the heartstrings and even threatens to call forth a few tears in its closing moments. In a year that renewed my hope that we might actually see The Last Guardian emerge from its vaporware limbo, it was a joy not only to play something so evocative of Team ICO's signature style, but also to love every minute of it.
'Old Red Wine' Award for Vintage Video Game That's Aged Well
Super Mario 64 is a fantastic game, and I say that as someone who only played it for the first time this year
For almost twenty years, Super Mario 64 was one of the largest and most embarrassing omissions from my gaming history. Having grown up in a household that owned initially Sega consoles and then switched to Sony machines with the arrival of the PlayStation, I never owned a Nintendo 64, and consequently missed out on this seminal title that essentially codified the archetype for the 3D platformer. When I acquired the game through the Wii's Virtual Console earlier this year, part of me was worried that I might be too late to the party to appreciate its true significance. Thankfully, those worries were unfounded. Mario 64 holds up fantastically thanks to its tight controls, open level design and mission-based structure, pioneering hallmarks that almost every other contemporary 3D platformer ended up trying to imitate. Not only that, but (as fellow GB blogonaut Mento pointed out in his blog series dissecting the game) it wildly varied objectives serve as a remarkable insight into the experimental nature of early 3D game design. That's why I'm glad I prioritised Mario 64 this year.
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That's the first part of My End of 2015 Awards over. Eight awards down, twenty-four to go. Join me tomorrow when I'll be handing out another eight individual awards to eight more games that I played this year. Thanks very much for reading guys. Take care and I'll see you around.
No matter how hard I try, there's just no penetrating the Power Armor that Fallout 4 seems to have encased itself in
I put Fallout 4 down yesterday. Not in the temporary "I need a break from this" sense, where you leave the game alone for a week and give yourself some breathing time in the hope you'll return to the game with renewed vitality and vigour. Nor in the permanent "I'm finished with this" sense, where you acknowledge your time with the game is definitively over. I put Fallout 4 down in a way that recognises I just wasn't having fun the way I was playing it, and needed to step away from it for a good long time while I think about what I want to get out of the experience. Upon finishing the quest I was on, I closed the game, deleted all my save data and ejected the disc from my PlayStation 4. No going back, at least not for a while.
It's not the first time I've done this with a giant Bethesda RPG, although it is the first time I've done it in a very long time. I had multiple false starts with Fallout 3 and Oblivion when I first played them back in late 2008 and early 2009 - more familiar with linear console RPGs of the Japanese variety at the time, I struggled to find my footing in their vast, wide open game-worlds. It wasn't until I played Morrowind in the summer of 2009 that the Bethesda formula 'clicked' for me, and I was able to lose myself in one of their games for a significant amount of time. Subsequent attempts to revisit Cyrodiil and the Capital Wasteland were much more successful and significantly lengthier affairs, and Fallout: New Vegas and Skyrim kept me similarly engrossed. That magical 'click' still hasn't happened with Fallout 4.
It took a while for Oblivion to 'click', but boy, did it feel good once it did
What this occasion does mark is the first time I've done this with a Bethesda RPG after such a substantial amount of play-time. My failed attempts to get into Fallout 3 and Oblivion each constituted no more than a dozen hours on the clock, but at the time of abandonment my Fallout 4 save data had just passed the fifty-five hour mark. I'd explored vast swathes of the Commonwealth, reached level 35, visited over two hundred locations and completed a substantial number of quests for all of the game's four central factions. That's a lot of progress to lose whichever way you spin it, but I don't feel bad about casting it all into the void, because almost all of it ended up feeling kind of fruitless.
None of my time spent in the Commonwealth has felt meaningful so far
As I've spent time thinking about what went wrong (or perhaps more accurately, what wasn't quite going right) with Fallout 4 compared to the other Bethesda RPGs I've played, I've come to a conclusion. My experience with Fallout 4 has fallen flat for at least partially the same reason those initial forays into Fallout 3 and Oblivion fell flat - I went in without a clear goal in mind. In those games, going in blind ended up feeling overwhelming because of the sheer size of the worlds and my lack of familiarity with the Bethesda formula. In Fallout 4, the lack of direction has combined with my now reasonable level of experience with these kinds of games to produce something very different from intimidation - a lackadaisical approach to questing and exploration that has left me indifferent to everything I've encountered in the game, in spite of the several dozen hours of investment I've put into it.
I need to re-learn the lessons that Morrowind taught me all those years ago
It's here that I need to revisit the lessons that I learned in my time spent in Vvardenfell all those summers ago. I get the most out of Bethesda's games when I go into them with a pre-defined character in mind, and not just in terms of development and build, but with regards to their goals and choices too. I shouldn't be aiming to please everyone, or taking on every single quest I come across regardless of allegiance or moral implications. I should be playing in a way that's true to my character, allying myself with the factions who best represent his or her ideals, and steering clear of anything that he or she obviously wouldn't do. Ironically, approaching the game in this way will probably provide me with a more complete experience than trying to complete everything I stumble upon the minute I stumble upon it. It's how I approached Skyrim, after all, and look how well that turned out.
I'm not sure when I'll be going back to Fallout 4 yet, but I can say for certain that it won't be in what little remains of this year. I need to take some time to think about who I want to be when I set foot in the Commonwealth again. Perhaps I'll be ready to do that in the new year, or perhaps I'll wait until the spring when I'll likely have a bit more free time on my hands. Whatever happens, I know I'll be much better prepared for my next trip through post-apocalypticBoston. I just hope that extra preparation and clearer guidance will equate to a more enjoyable experience. Thanks for reading guys. Take care, and I'll see you around.
Hey folks. After the relentless tide of backlog-based bloggery that was October, I elected to play it a little quieter through November. There were a few external factors that limited my time for both game-playing and blog-writing, the most obvious one being my attempt to participate in NaNoWriMo this year (which I'll cover in more detail a little later in this blog). That's not to say my November was a game-free one, mind - I still found time for a decent amount of grabbin'-and-stabbin', shootin'-and-lootin', catchin'-and-hatchin' good-times throughout the last five weeks or so. I'll try and cover each of the games I've been spending time with as best I can below, beginning with...
Uh, Uh, Uh, Uh, Uh: Victorian London Edition...
One of the great things about owning a PlayStation 4 is that I can finally populate my blogs with screenshots from my own playthroughs. Here's one of my favourite bits of glitchery from my time with AC Syndicate.
Assassin's Creed Syndicate is the most fun I've had with an Assassin's Creed game since Assassin's Creed II. Bear in mind that's coming from someone who's yet to touch anything else post-Revelations, and that while I recognise Brotherhood is the best-playing game in the Ezio arc, nothing has yet come close to the magical feeling of exploring Venice and Florence and witnessing Ezio grow from a reckless teenager into a mature young man. Despite a blatantly 'gamey' feel, with its plethora of different collectibles and regimentally structured gang warfare mechanics, I ended up really warming to this latest offering from Ubisoft. No mean feat, considering my lacklustre experience with Revelations last year very nearly put me off the franchise for good.
I don't know how much of my enjoyment of Syndicate was derived from its setting, but there was something undeniably comforting about the familiarity of London, even in its Victorian regalia. Traversing streets that I know, and seeing landmarks that I recognise, helped the world to come alive for me. I appreciated the story too, which fused the typical Assassins-versus-Templars mythos with a "small boy/girl in the big city" pretext, all complemented by some ridiculous-yet-fantastic cameos. It felt like a Dickens novel in video game form, with its exaggerated characters inhabiting a rendition of London so vivid that you can practically smell the horses and feel the coal-ash on your skin. The cities have always been characters in their own right in these games, and I think London is the best example of that I've yet seen from the franchise.
Speaking of characters, I think Syndicate may well have my favourite protagonist from the series since Ezio (something of a moot point when you consider I'm yet to play any of the games that came out after the end of Ezio's arc). I'm not talking about Jacob Frye, the reckless, cocksure idiot who ticks just about every box on the list of Generic Protagonist Specifications, but rather his twin sister, Evie. I found myself playing as her for the bulk of my time with Syndicate, and wound up really enjoying her character. She's the perfect foil to her dolt of a brother - intelligent, considering and cautious, while still being determined, funny, and likeable in her own right. Part of me was impressed her character was handled so well in a series that up until now has been dominated by male protagonists, although that same part of me was annoyed that she was shoehorned into a romantic relationship with one of the other characters, seemingly just for the sake of it. I was also disappointed that I couldn't use her in any of the game's main assassination missions, all of which are assigned to Jacob.
On the subject of the multiple protagonists thing, I'm also retrospectively perturbed that the game didn't handle that design choice better. I say retrospectively because I didn't realise it bothered me until the game's final story mission, which flicks control back and forth between Jacob and Evie as they both play different roles within the framework of a single mission. This is the only mission in the entire game that does this, and it left me wondering why the folks at Ubisoft didn't consider using this trick in other places. At the very least it could have made for some much more memorable assassination missions - imagine if the game had you orchestrate some kind of distraction as Evie to give Jacob a better approach to his target, or vice versa. More of that stuff might have gone a long way towards better establishing the dynamic between the Frye twins too, which in turn might have heightened the impact of the final mission and...
...sorry, I got a little carried away there.
I thoroughly enjoyed Assassin's Creed Syndicate. I'm glad I jumped into it straight away and didn't relegate it to the bottom of my seemingly ever-growing list of Assassin's Creed games to beat. As I said above, there's no getting around how systematic the gameplay feels at times, particularly in those situations where it feels like all you're doing is busywork for the sake of making numbers go up. But the setting, the characters and the improved mechanics go a long way towards making all those things a little easier for me to forgive. Maybe I'm not quite as done with the Assassin's Creed franchise as I thought I was.
Not So Lost In The Wasteland...
I wonder where this tunnel leads... Maybe to an alternate dimension where the game is well-written?
I'm not feeling Fallout 4 the way I'd hoped I would. There are a multitude of reasons why - a measure of open-world fatigue instigated by powering through Assassin's Creed Syndicate, mixed with a dash of general video game burnout post-Backlogtober, and served up with a side order of disappointment that the game ultimately doesn't feel like much of a step forward for the established Bethesda formula. That last one's probably the biggest factor, and one I can't really put down to fatigue since it's been well over three years since I spent any significant amount of time with a Bethesda game. Skyrim felt like a big leap forward from Oblivion in all the right ways, with its Radiant AI systems, more streamlined character development that didn't sacrifice the potential for role-playing and specialised character builds, and a ton of tweaks and refinements to the core gameplay systems that made the whole thing more fun to play. Next to that leap forward, Fallout 4 feels a lot like more Fallout 3 with some Minecraft sprinkled on top.
I recognise that sells the obvious improvements made in Fallout 4 short, but I think my viewpoint stems from the existence of Fallout: New Vegas. That game, developed "off-site" by Obsidian Entertainment, took everything I found enjoyable in Fallout 3 and kicked it up a few notches. The writing was a lot better, and quest structures were more varied and entertaining. The world felt more lived-in, while at the same time offering a better sense of progression by 'gating' the difficulty of its open world rather than scaling to match the player. Choices felt like they had consequences, and the game's various factions felt truly at odds with each other in a way that impacted the gameplay experience beyond just giving the player a ton of different quest-lines to follow. I preferred its approach to character development and inventory management as well - playing in Hardcore mode was a tough but thrilling experience. Put simply, New Vegas was already the Skyrim to Fallout 3's Oblivion, which meant Fallout 4 needed to do something spectacular to make its mark on me.
So far, Fallout 4 feels like it reneges almost all of New Vegas' improvements (the one exception being the faction stuff, which does actually feel pretty satisfying and seems like it's going to come to a head where I'll have to come down definitively on one side or another eventually). The writing is lacklustre, and hampered by the new inclusion of a voiced protagonist that severely limits available possibilities in conversation. The levelling system seems like a logical progression of Skyrim's streamlining, but in practice it ends up feeling a little too loose and scatter-shot. The quest design so far has been formulaic and underwhelming, largely consisting of fetch quests and area-clearing, and the bottlecap payouts received for completing them don't feel much like rewards since there's very little incentive to spend them on anything. I could go on, or I could direct you to fellow duder-blogger ArbitraryWater's blog about the game, which is more comprehensive and on-the-nose than I could ever hope to be.
I don't wish to appear too down on Fallout 4, because in spite of all my gripes and complaints I'm still enjoying the game. The shooting is a marked improvement over both Fallout 3 and New Vegas, which makes the combat more fun to engage with and VATS less of a necessity. I really like the weapon and armour crafting systems, and I admire Bethesda for coming up with such an inspired way of turning all the junk that populates the Commonwealth into valuable resources. There's also the sense of exploration and discovery, which (clichéd though it may be) nobody else does as well as Bethesda - much like Skyrim, some of my most memorable moments in Fallout 4 so far have come from turning off all my quest markers and following a new road or dirt-track to see where it leads. Ultimately, I think my current hour count says all that needs to be said about my experience with Fallout 4 - forty hours as of the time of writing. A figure that is both far too much time to spend with a game one doesn't like, and also far too little time to spend with a brand new Bethesda game. Part of me is already thinking that dropping all the exploration and main-lining the main quest might not be such a bad idea after all.
Gotta Catch 'Em All... Again...
In the absence of a proper screenshot, here's a cool pre-rendered image of Kyogre and Groudon gettin' down to business that I found on Google (pro-tip - don't Google 'Kyogre and Groudon gettin' down to business'...)
It dawned on me last week, on the one-year anniversary of its release, that I'm still yet to complete a playthrough of Pokémon Omega Ruby or Alpha Sapphire. Given my undeniable obsession with the franchise through most of 2013 and 2014, I'm not entirely sure how this happened. The most likely explanation is that these third-generation remakes are set in my least-favourite part of the known Pokémon world, the water-drenched region of Hoenn. It's a region that's complicated to navigate and far too over-reliant on Water-type HMs, especially towards the end of its story. It doesn't help that, much like Ruby and Sapphire felt mechanically stunted next following Gold and Silver, so too does ORAS feel like a step back from some of the advances made in X and Y - the loss of a customisable player character was a particularly tough pill for me to swallow on my first attempts at playing the game.
Since last November I've made many efforts to push through the most recent additions to the core Pokémon franchise. Most of those haven't made it beyond the second gym in Omega Ruby, as I either got distracted by other titles or just wasn't feeling the early stages of the game. It wasn't until back in August, when I started an Egglocke playthrough of Alpha Sapphire, that things finally started to fall into place for me. It was something I was planning to do anyway, having previously embarked on a similar project through Pokémon X last year. But as I pressed on through Hoenn, trying to stick to regular updates for those following my Egglocke, something changed. I began enjoying the game, and grew ever more eager to experience what was going to happen in each new city and on every new route. I've been gradually working my way through the game, limiting myself to two or three play sessions per week, and I'm now incredibly close to battling the eighth gym leader, with the Elite Four not far behind.
But that's not all. After recent developments on the Alpha Sapphire side of things led me to realise that I'm perilously close to finishing my fun side-project before my serious playthrough, I jumped back into Omega Ruby (which was always supposed to be my 'main' game) and set about playing through the game properly. Progress has been slow but steady - since restarting my save file on November 28th (the one-year anniversary of ORAS's release here in the UK) I've won two badges and made it as far as Slateport City. If I can maintain that methodical pace, I reckon I'll have Omega Ruby wrapped up by the end of this year, with the Alpha Sapphire Egglocke coming to a conclusion not long after that.
As for my opinions on the game itself, they've definitely turned around since this time last year. I'm not sure if these remakes feature better signposting than the Game Boy Advance originals, but I feel like I have a much better handle on where I'm going in ORAS than I ever did in Emerald, especially in the water routes that dominate the eastern portion of the map. It's definitely a bigger game than X and Y were, but it's also a more cohesive one - everything feels like it belongs, something that wasn't always the case in Kalos due to the 'greatest hits'-esque roster of native Pokémon and the relative dearth of new additions for the sixth generation. ORAS has more stuff to do as well, what with the return of Pokémon Contests and the promise of much more substantial post-game content awaiting me after I beat the Elite Four. All of that, plus the inclusion of new forms and Mega Evolutions, has been enough to convince me to finally ditch my near 900 hours spent in Y and migrate my entire roster of Pokémon over into Omega Ruby when I'm done. I'm going to miss my little custom-created player character, but I think I've made my peace with that now.
A final note under this header for anyone curious about the Alpha Sapphire Egglocke - I've been recording my progress through Let's Play-style video updates, focusing on hatching the eggs and taking on the gym leaders of Hoenn. I've embedded a complete playlist below, should anyone wish to check that out. A word of warning - as I don't own a 3DS with capture technology, I've had to opt for the ol' 'point-a-camera-at-the-screen' technique. Go in with low expectations, and the production values shouldn't be too bothersome.
It's Game Of The Year Season...
As we approach the end of 2015, it's once again time to start thinking about handing out some awards to the video games that have defined the last twelve months for me. In past years I've gone all-out for Game of the Year, throwing together various blog-stravaganzas under the unimaginative umbrella heading 'My End of Year Awards'. That's something I scaled back on the last two years, as there simply wasn't enough variety in what I played to justify any kind of extended awards ceremony - I mean, did every individual Pokémon game I played in 2013 really need its own unique award? I took everything back to basics, wrote a few words acknowledging my top ten games of the year, and left it at that.
My initial plan for this year was to go down the same route, keep the awards down to a smattering of titles and offer recognition only to the cream of the crop. But when I really think about it, that doesn't sound like anywhere near as much fun. I enjoyed putting together those all-encompassing feature-length blog posts, because it encouraged me to look back over the year as a whole and acknowledge everything I'd played. After giving the list of games I've played this year a once-over to make sure there isn't too much over-representation for any one franchise (thankfully there isn't), I've decided to return to the old format this year and make My End of 2015 Awards a multi-part bonanza in which everything gets a nod before the very best are singled out. I'm so excited to write it all that I've already started planning everything out, so be sure to keep an eye out between Christmas and New Year for the finished product.
Some Other Stuff That Won't Fit Into Neat Categories...
Bear with me guys, this jumbo-blog ("jumblog"?) is almost over. There's just a couple more loose ends that need tying up before I sign off.
In my last blog post, from all the way back at the end of October, I had said I was going to participate in NaNoWriMo this year. Having already laid out the vast majority of my plan beforehand (a kids' book about a boy who takes on the properties of anything he eats), I started writing in earnest on November 1st. My initial enthusiasm began to wane, however, as I started becoming obsessed with word counts and less invested on what really mattered - namely the act of writing. Just under halfway through the month, with around 14,000 words under my belt, I just... stopped. I was sat at my desk, hammering away at my keyboard, when I caught myself thinking, "Y'know, I'd much rather be writing something else. Something I'm passionate about and something I believe in, not some hastily-drafted project dreamed up with the sole intention of being NaNoWriMo fodder." So I closed the document, opened another, and haven't looked back since.
A lot of people would probably call this an abject failure, and from a NaNoWriMo standpoint I'd say they're right. However, what the experience did achieve was more important to me than a rushed manuscript of inconsistent quality. That other document I opened? It was the work-in-progress draft of something called The Hawker, a novel I've been working on for ages, but haven't been able to bring myself to pick up since I hit a bout of writer's block last year. In the last two weeks I've managed to add some 10,000 words to the manuscript, dug myself out of the narrative hole I was in when I'd put it down, and approached the whole project with a renewed sense of vitality. NaNoWriMo may have objectively been a failure, but the real aim of the whole endeavour was always to get me back into writing fiction so I could return to my serious projects with the energy and enthusiasm they need and deserve. In that respect, for me personally, it's been a greater success than I'd ever hoped for.
The last thing I want to say here is that I realise 2015 has been a very poor year for me, blog-wise. Looking back over my archived blogs, I've written just twenty entries so far this year (twenty-one if we're including this one). That number becomes even more shameful when you consider that thirteen of those entries, approximately two thirds of my entire blogging output this year, were written as part of the month-long Backlogtober initiative. That's not for want of trying, mind - I did try to kick-start a new serial blog project in the form of The Keyblade Chronicles, but that turned out to be dead on arrival as I struggled to find the right format and approach for it (I maintain that The Keyblade Chronicles will eventually happen, but I need a break from the series before I re-approach it). Ultimately, I'm not happy with the lack of blog content I produced this year, especially when you consider the number and variety of titles I've played over the course of 2015.
I'm going to try and redress that balance in 2016. I want to try and bring you guys more thoughtful pieces of content, like my Final Fantasy XIII blog from earlier this year, on a more frequent basis. I want to commit to regular, serialised content like A Month in Skyrim, or Enduring Final Fantasy VII. At some point I'd like to revisit the format of last year's Fire Red Nuzlocke Challenge and try to do something even greater and more ambitious with it. I don't want this blog, this little corner of the internet that I've spent over seven years cultivating and caring for, to wither away and die. I realise this is something that only I can change, and the onus is on me to stick to the words I've written above, but I think that my experiences through Backlogtober and NaNoWriMo this year have taught me that with passion and dedication, it's definitely possible.
I think that about does it for this blog. As always, thanks so much to all of you who read these things, and an extra-special thanks to those of you who've endured right through this ridiculously unwieldy entry and made it to the end. I'm still kind of flabbergasted that anybody reads these things, and I know I've said it before, but it does mean a huge amount to know I'm not just pushing these things out into a vacuum. I'm not sure if there'll be any more substantial blog outbursts from me between now and My End of 2015 Awards, mainly because I'll be dividing my writing time between planning all that late-year awesomeness and maintaining the re-discovered momentum of The Hawker. Until whenever the next post ends up being, I'll see you around the site. Take it easy, duders, and a pre-emptive, just-in-case 'Merry Christmas' and 'Happy Holidays' to each and every one of you.
This was my Everest, and I was... whatever the game-playing equivalent of an Ice Climber is
Well folks, it's been a really interesting month. For those of you who may have missed it (although I'm not sure how you could, given how uncharacteristically ubiquitous I've been this month), I should probably explain. Throughout October I've been participating in something dubbed 'Backlogtober', a borderline masochistic initiative to clear as many games from my backlog as possible before the end of the month. I came up with the idea in mid-September, after my Pile of Shame grew close to the impossible milestone of two hundred titles. I set about preparing by creating a shortlist of ten titles to play, and made some early in-roads by cutting a handful of the more undesirable prospects from the list altogether.
On the eve of Backlogtober, with my shortlist complete and a rough plan in place, I didn't have very high hopes for my prospects of success. I don't have a great track record for completing video games in a timely fashion, largely due to my tendency to buy more games than I have the time to play, and my typically methodical, exploratory play style. I figured I'd be lucky to make it through half a dozen titles before the end of October, still a huge victory by my usual standards, and feel good for having had a decent crack at trying to do something about my impregnable backlog.
With its short running time and enjoyable campaign, Brothers set the tone for the entirety of Backlogtober
What actually happened was something altogether more spectacular. Instead of running out of steam or abandoning the project altogether, as I'd feared I might, I hit the ground running on October 1st and didn't look back. From the done-in-one experience of playing Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons on the very first day, I carried a determined attitude right through Backlogtober, defeating games purposefully, comprehensively and, against all odds, ahead of schedule. One game in one day became two in three, and then three in seven, and so on. I hit my cautious prediction of six games beaten in just thirteen days, less than halfway through the allocated time, and one of those games wasn't even originally included in the shortlist for the initiative. Progress did start to slow a little after that, but I'm not sure if that was due to me shifting down a gear or simply because the scheduled games ended up being a little longer overall than the first few. Whatever the reason, I was still able to beat a further five titles through the back end of the month, taking my total number of games beaten in October to eleven.
Eleven games beaten in a single month is a frankly ludicrous figure. I don't think I've ever beaten that many games in such a short space of time before - hell, I don't even think I've managed half of that in the same time frame up until now. Admittedly, circumstances conspired to make this achievement possible - I purposefully chose mostly short games to maximise my impact on my Pile of Shame, I allowed some of my other commitments like darts and creative writing to take a backseat this month, and I had a week of annual leave early on in the endeavour which gave me a decent chunk of gaming time I wouldn't have otherwise had. But whichever way you spin it, I still think beating eleven games in thirty-one days is hugely impressive, especially given my usual gaming demeanour. I'm proud of myself for sticking to my guns and exceeding my own expectations.
Burial at Sea is the best BioShock characters in the best BioShock setting. More thoughts to follow later
As I'm writing this, there's still a little of Backlogtober left, but not enough time for me to realistically consider adding to the tally. I'd hoped that in the last few days of the month I'd be able to put paid to one more title, and the one I chose was BioShock Infinite's Burial at Sea DLC. I downloaded both episodes earlier this year, made a mental note to check them out in the near future, and then promptly dropped that note down the back of the metaphorical sofa that is my mind. When it became apparent that I was going to have a bit of time left over at the end of the month, I recovered that note, smoothed out the creases and filed it with the others. I did manage to clear the first episode and I've put maybe an hour into the second at this point, but there's no way I'm going to finish it before the clock strikes midnight and Backlogtober officially comes to an end. I'll still be seeing it through to completion, but it'll be a November conquest rather than part of the temporarily envisioned 'backlogger's dozen'. That means I'll be saving any in-depth analysis on it for another blog, at another time, maybe even in another reality.
So coming out of this whole Backlogtober business, how exactly do the numbers stack up at this point? Let's take a look, shall we?
Here is a pie chart, because STATISTICS!
Before I started Backlogtober, my Pile of Shame stood at 197 unfinished video games.
I managed to get rid of ELEVEN games from the list during the preliminary cull phase, reducing the total to 186.
Through Backlogtober I managed to beat every single one of the ten games I shortlisted, in addition to cutting ties with another four unbeaten games. This all correlates to a net reduction of FOURTEEN further games, meaning an overall cut of TWENTY-FIVE titles that left the Pile of Shame 172 games high.
Unfortunately that's not the end of the story. Throughout October I picked up a smattering of new games that have pushed the total back up. I bought TEN titles in all, taking the grand total back up to 182 games.
While I also played Lara Croft Go to completion this month, it was a brand new purchase that I didn't own before the initiative began. Therefore, its purchase and completion have no bearing on the totals above.
All this means that my Pile of Shame fell overall, a net reduction of fifteen games thanks to my Backlogtober efforts. That's fantastic, but it doesn't change the fact that there's a clear weakness here - while I really ramped up my game-clearing, I did absolutely nothing about my tendency to buy cheap games with a view to playing them at a later date. That's a real problem here, and one of the key reasons that I ended up in this mess in the first place. While Backlogtober has been an incredible symptomatic cure, cutting down on my backlog by beating games, I feel like I also need to make a long-term change to prevention of this problem. That's why, from here on out, I'm committing to buying no more than one video game per month. If I can cut down my acquisition of video games as well as beating more of the titles I already own, then I should be able to make even deeper in-roads into my Pile of Shame, and at an even faster rate.
Now that's over, let's do it all again! But with writing this time! Because I hate myself!
I'm keen to apply the work ethic I brought to Backlogtober to something else - preferably something a little more constructive, challenging and personally enriching than playing video games. That's why, beginning tomorrow, I'll be enrolling in my first ever NaNoWriMo. For the uninitiated, NaNoWriMo is a contraction of National Novel Writing Month, an annual event that encourages prospective novelists to hammer out a fifty-thousand word manuscript in the thirty days of November. It's a demanding but exciting prospect that combines my love of creative writing with some of the discipline and determination that I've managed to maintain throughout Backlogtober. I have a decent idea of what I'll be writing - I'm going to attempt a children's adventure story, and I have my protagonist, antagonist and the rough structure of the journey mostly conceived. Beyond that I suspect it'll be a very organic writing project, with the finer points of the narrative taking shape spontaneously as I go. I don't expect the result to be anything like my finest work, but if it gets me back into the habit of writing regularly and at length then I'll consider it a success regardless of the quality of the finished product.
Say hi to the newest member of my console family
One thing that's likely to make NaNoWriMo particularly challenging for me is my acquisition of a current generation games console. After a couple of years waiting in the wings to see how the new machines stacked up, I finally took the plunge and ordered myself a PlayStation 4, which arrived earlier today. It's the 1TB model that I mentioned in my previous blog, bundled with Assassin's Creed Syndicate, Watch_Dogs, Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection and a PlayStation TV. Obviously it's early days and I haven't spent much time with it yet, but my early impressions have been overwhelmingly positive. I dabbled with AC Syndicate for an hour or so and was blown away by the graphical fidelity, even if on a superficial level it didn't feel all that different from the other Assassin's Creed games I've played. I've also fallen head over heels in love with the concept of the Share button, and I can see myself getting a lot of use out of it grabbing screenshots and snippets of gameplay to use in future blogs. I'm pretty sure I can keep myself in check and focus on the writing for the time being, but that's going to become exponentially more difficult when Fallout 4 releases on November 10th. Wish me luck folks! Oh, and if anyone wants to exchange friend requests, feel free to seek me out (I'm 'DanK1990' on the PlayStation Network), or leave your PSN ID in the comments below and I'll hit you up next time I log in.
I'm going to bring this blog to a close here, and Backlogtober 2015 with it. It's been one hell of a journey, and as much as I'm proud of what I've achieved, I'm also glad to be leaving such an intense period of video-gamery behind. I've definitely learned from the experience, and hopefully I'll be able to apply some of that to my game-playing in future in the hopes of continuing to whittle down my menacing mountain of unfinished games. Hell, I could even see myself turning this into an annual thing, and bringing it back next year for Backlogtober 2016. Thanks very much for reading, duders. Take care, and I'll see you around.
Dan
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Currently playing - BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea - Episode 2 (X360)
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