January in Games: A Super Late Look
By nophilip 2 Comments
Hello fellow duders! I decided to write more about the games I play in 2015 as sort of a new year's resolution. This is way later than I intended to get January's entry done, but here it is. I'll be writing the most about games I actually finished in a given month, mention games I'm still working on, and try to get a few words out about smaller experiences (local multiplayer games and the like).
GAMES I FINISHED
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (PS3)
I began my journey with Metal Gear in 2012. The HD collection had just come out a few months prior. Having heard a bunch about how great the series was, I decided to go through all the story-relevant entries in chronological order. So I picked up the HD collection, played MGS3, and loved the hell out of it. I then proceeded to play through the rest of the games up to the halfway point of MGS2, where I petered out. I didn't care for much about that game and just got tired of how it played.
Flash forward to December 2014, when Metal Gear Scanlon 2 was wrapping up. Having now satisfied my own internal requirements for series completion (at least I saw the whole game, even if I didn't play it myself), I started MGS4 that day. That game is... something else. It's definitely the craziest Metal Gear game I had played up to this point. The scene with Raiden at the end of Act IV may be the most ridiculous/dumb/great scenes I have seen in a video game.
So the story is totally bonkers, but the gameplay headed in the opposite direction. It's way more playable than previous entries in the series. I never felt like I was fighting the controls or that Snake was doing what he felt like instead of what I wanted him to do. Every aspect of this game plays better than any of the previous entries. Even stuff like piloting a Metal Gear felt pretty natural.
I had a good enough time with this game that I decided to go for the Platinum trophy. I ended up getting it pretty early in the month.
SCORE: 4/5
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (PC)
The Metal Gear journey continues! If you didn't think the series could get more ridiculous after MGS4, you were wrong. I initially had a really terrible time with this game (I could not pull off parries for the life of me). I played through the first chapter and thought the "cut everything into a billion pieces" system was cool, but remained frustrated with the rest of the controls.
The second time I booted it up everything clicked. For some reason the controls felt right, I could pull of parries 95% of the time, and I was ripping through guys left and right. I had a great time with the rest of the game (except for the fight with the dude who splits into lots of pieces. That was super tedious and boring). The story is pretty nonsensical and somehow feels way more Japanese than normal Metal Gear does, which is likely the influence of the insane minds at Platinum. The end fight(s) make the entire experience worthwhile. I was not disappointed.
SCORE: 3.5/5
Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes (PC)
Like everyone else, I was a little incredulous about the reports of this game on release. 1-2 hours to get through the game? It sounded crazy. Even going in with those expectations, I was STILL surprised by how short it was. That said, it's still a hell of a teaser for MGS5 proper. I'm really interested to see where the story goes, as I've always been more invested in the Big Boss side of things than the modern-day games.
The game plays incredibly well compared to everything else in the series, and pretty much every single new mechanic is a welcome change. The slow-mo reaction time window when an enemy sees you is perhaps the best new thing in there. It looks fantastic as well.
I ended up playing through all the available missions once. I didn't really feel the need to go back and go for S-ranks on everything or collect all the tapes, but that may just be Metal Gear fatigue speaking. I'll probably go back to the game if Phantom Pain is too long in coming.
SCORE: 4/5 (But really only because I paid something like $14 for it in the Steam sale. I can't imagine paying more than $20 for what is essentially the Tanker demo from MGS2)
I decided to go back and play through the whole Dragon Age series after checking out the Dragon Age Keep website and realizing that I had forgotten a whole bunch about what happens in those games. I ended up starting Inquisition in mid-December, and eventually got back to it after wrapping up my Metal Gear fling.
I have really mixed feelings about this game. The overarching story is serviceable, but that was never DA's main strength anyway. Where this game really shined for me was the moment-to-moment stories and character interactions. Smaller self-contained adventures like the dinner party mission were really neat to play through. The banter between your party members as you run around is probably the best I've heard in video games. Inquisition has really superbly written, well thought out characters. My crew for most of the game was Iron Bull, Vivienne, and Dorian (swapped out Solas because he was a dick about my elven heritage).
Then we get to the gameplay. I found the combat in this game to be really dull. Gone are the days of the tightly paced, deeply strategic fights of Dragon Age: Origins. Gone are the days of the flashier-but-shallower, bombastic fights of Dragon Age II. In its place is a system of "Hold down this button to kill everything. Every so often tap a button to make your character do something slightly different." I decided to play on Hard, as I heard the game was quite a bit easier than previous entries in the series. However, Inquisition was still braindead-easy for me.
Overall I enjoyed my time with the game. The characters and some of the story grabbed me like few other games have, but I just didn't enjoy fighting anyone.
SCORE: 3.5/5
Wolfenstein: The New Order (PC)
Confession time: This is my first Wolfenstein game. Wolfenstein 3D came out when I was 2, and I didn't really start playing shooters until I was 17 or 18. To this day they're not really my favorite franchise. To my surprise, I had a hell of a time with The New Order. The shooting is fast, fun, and controls tightly. The stealth is pretty good and entirely optional. The first-person cover/leaning system is probably the first time I've actually found a "lean" button useful.
What really surprised me about the game was the quality of the story. It does a really good job of telling a personal, heartfelt tale on the goofy backdrop of alternate history Space Nazis. I decided to save the Scottish guy, and was really impressed with some of the cutscenes that dealt with his survivor's guilt as the game went on.
MachineGames, this was a good first title. More like this, please.
SCORE: 4.5/5
I'm one of those weird guys that actually really liked FFXIII. The game was disappointingly linear, but I really enjoyed the battle system, characters (except Hope), and world they created in the game. So when XIII-2 first came out and was supposed to have fixed the things I didn't like about the first game, I was pretty excited. I ended up stopping about a third of the way through the first time. I decided to give it another shot with the Steam release.
The excellent combat from XIII is still intact, but they've added a Pokemon sort of monster training system for the third party member. I tend not to enjoy those sorts of systems anywhere but Pokemon (Ni no Kuni being a rare exception), so I try to circumvent it the best I can. I find some good starter monsters, switch to what the internet says are the best ones ASAP, and never change from them. This is especially true with XIII-2, since you are punished for experimenting. If you want to level up your monsters, you really have to dump a lot of items into them. That means you will either have few left over when you want to switch to a new monster, or you'll be grinding for a while.
XIII-2's story is a weird beast. It's kind of a mess, as most time travel stories are. The majority of the plot points don't make any sense at all, but I think there's an interesting core at its center. The idea of Caius attempting to destroy time in order to save this girl he's forced to watch die over and over again is really compelling. It's so much more personal than the motivations of most other FF villains. It's too bad they couldn't write something better around that idea.
SCORE: 3/5
GAMES I PLAYED SOME OF:
I'll write more about these next month.
Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen (PS3)
Guild Wars 2 (PC)
Metroid Prime (Wii U)
Elite: Dangerous (PC)
Nuclear Throne (PC)
MULTIPLAYER STUFF:
I pretty much only ever play this with my younger brother anymore. He lives with us on the weekends, so we tend to play a few matches each time he's over. I still love this game a ton, I just have lost most of my desire to play with people I don't know.
Haven't done a ton with this so far, but my brother and had fun getting to Zone 2 in the local co-op. It's a really neat idea for a game. I'll have to spend more time with it.
1.03 is out, and with it brings new gods, new monsters, and most importantly a new boss. My fiancee, my brother and I have played a lot of Crawl so far and booted this up as soon as we heard about the update. The new boss needs rebalancing, as it seems to be a lot easier to win as the human. We continue to look forward to seeing how this game develops and gets better over time.
Super Slam Dunk Touchdown (PC)
This is a fun, dumb little thing. Played it with (once again) my brother and fiancee. It's pretty rudimentary so far. I see potential there, but they need to do some more work to it.
This was a staple of the holiday season in my family. The nature of the game (playing on smartphones) meant I could get just about anybody to play- even my grandparents, who DO NOT play video games. General consensus after several sessions: Drawful is the overall favorite, followed by Fibbage and You Don't Know Jack. YDKJ seems to be a bit too complicated and game-y for non-gamers.
Thanks for reading! I'll try to get next month's out closer to the actual end of the month.