Games that I played and/or finished in 2021
Games not in Giant Bomb's database:
- What Comes After: small 1 hour indie game about what comes after death, completed 01/18/21. The small stories with NPCs is neat but there's a lot of reading. Eventually that whittled my patience and I started skipping NPCs.
Completed 01/14/21. A casual fun romp with a friend. Tone can be iffy when I'm shooting cop cars and bad guys but overall great with a nice twist and great camera work.
Campaign complete 01/21. Satisfying headshot simulator with a mouse and keyboard. Gorgeous environments.
Completed 01/19/21. Extremely gorgeous art and audio and very provocative presentation. The tech details and "how are they doing this" is continuous throughout. The story makes me think about the meaning. The gameplay is light yet feels expansive, moving through landscapes that have giant views and gorgeous art.
I can't stress enough how provocative the game is. It all comes together, all the elements marry well, the abstract gameplay and story mesh very nicely.
Wow. 3 1/2 years of work and I'm glad I got to experience it.
Completed 01/24/21, absolutely a thrill ride. It's Resident Evil 2 remake but more condensed and more tense with a touch of extra action from the dodge mechanic, which feels great to pull off perfectly. Aside from some lack of telegraphing of the 2nd final boss fight for shooting the electric towers, I had such a good time being immersed in the world. I hope I remember to return to this again at some point.
Completed 02/12/21. An absorbing story and environment with intriguing themes to think about. The duality of spirit vs. modern world is a cool twist and is well integrated into the story. The spirit world carries the suffering while the modern world shows the outcome. There were some plot twists I didn't expect, though they didn't blow me away but they were cool revelations that made me rethink what I thought I knew about the characters. The ending though...it's left up to the player to decide what happens but not through mechanically choosing, only by thought. Perhaps that's better than letting the player choose and giving a stinted ending scene since that's not what the game was about. It was about learning the characters and story and why they are the way they are rather than a "choose your own adventure", so in that way the ending they chose fits better to keep with the tone of gameplay.
Completed with the Prometheus mod on Normal 03/13/21, wow what an experience. More enemy spawns, new weapons and enemy types, but the most emotionally impacting part was friendly AI is actually competent now and they don't die so easily. I was taking part in a battle rather than being a lone wolf that saves everyone. However there were still moments where I would take charge and be a hero in fights which felt even more impactful knowing I'm there with sort-of equally skilled comrades.
I think the way this was achieved was the raised difficulty bar and enemy count. Even on Normal I was dying as much as I would on Legendary but without having to take cover the whole time. Because of the greater challenge and enemy count I appreciated any help I would get from friendly AI who are actually competant now through their aggression, increased health, and increased damage. So we plowed through waves of enemies "together" rather than me taking the charge like in vanilla Halo with more passive AI.
So all this I actually cared about my AI teammates this time and wanted to help them. That's never happened in any other vanilla Halo game I've played, and I appreciate the mod developer giving this experience to me. I'm looking forward to playing Halo 3 with a similar type of mod.
Oh my, so far I put in 9 hours in one day staying up until 4:30 am on 03/10/21.
Maybe it was because I was working overtime and wanted a mental break from it all. Maybe it's the charming visuals. Maybe it's the well-crafted pace. Maybe a combo of everything.
The discovery aspect is quite gripping, finding a new "thing" I can do/make which creates that "one more thing" feeling. When I stopped playing, aside from needing to go to sleep, is that mining and smelting are "time waste-y". I'm not performing any interesting activity like I would in hunting for example, having to sneak up on deer. I'm just going through the motions of finding ore, clicking A LOT to mine, then waiting for things to smelt. I have a feeling that this will continue but in greater quantity which I will eventually cheat my way around if I have to because it's so rote.
We'll see how much more time I spend with this game. Definitely no more all-nighters ugh.
Last played 02/14/21, 5 hours in. A mechanically extra-polished rogue-lite that's addicting quality has that "oh my that run and combo was amazing". It's cool that they integrated the "start over" part of rogue-likes into the story, it made the game feel more cohesive and another reason to keep playing onward to continue the plot.
Questioning whether I'll return to this however, not sure why. Maybe not what I'm looking for at the moment.
