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A game that pulls you in and doesn't take you for a ride so much as sits you down and tells you a tale about a sad world where people are trying to hold on to what morsels of humanity they can under the stress.
One of the few games where 'choice' as a gameplay mechanic feels natural and not gimmicky, getting through The Walking Dead felt like an experience that was wholly my own.
But it's a story where the experiences of others can easily be empathized with. The options the game presents you with aren't your polar red vs. blue, good vs. bad, they're different shades of grey in a world blind to colour. So at the end of the passionate arguments over who said what or who did what, I can still understand why someone would make another decision.
And that there were others out there making different decisions is something that the ending of each episode reminds you of. The game seems keen on making you reflect on your choices, not just by having you deal with the consequences, but by making you a statistic almost forcing you to second-guess yourself or dig in your heels.
It all comes together in a tight, well written, well produced, and extremely well performed package. And the writing and performances cannot be understated. There are characters you'll come to love and others you'll come to hate, but for the most part you'll probably end up somewhere in the middle on a good number of them. That's purely because throughout the game you're learning more about these characters, and how none of them are really as one-dimensional as you might think.
Character is the crux of The Walking Dead. Lots of a games have choices, and choice is handled well here, but it's the personalities that you'll flip-flop on as together you try to survive the horrors of the new world that make The Walking Dead so special.
Also, Don't be afraid. :'(
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Yes, this came out on the PC in 2012.
Oh Alan Wake. Ever have one of those games you don't have any particular hope for but for no discernable reason decide on a whim to pay full price and give it a shot and it absolutely knocks your socks off? That was Alan Wake for me.
This game really hit all bases with me. The story was intriguing, the gameplay tense and exciting, the atmosphere of the small town locales you visit dripping with moodiness, and all with a pitch-perfect TV show-style presentation.
There wasn't a moment during the main story where I didn't want to press on or was pulled out of small town Bright Falls. Playing an episode a night for a week straight gave me that rare genuine sense of escape few things can provide.
Unfortunately the additional chapters don't quite stack up to the main game, and perhaps were best experienced with a break. The main game feels so cohesive that immediately jumping into the DLC was a bit jarring, not to mention the main story feels just right in terms of length so going straight to the DLC made things immediately start to feel stale.
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See the ending everybody's talking about!
OK, seriously, all that overreacting and underreacting aside, I enjoyed Mass Effect 3. Frankly they had to mess up a lot more than the ending to make me hate Mass Effect 3, and I actually liked the ending anyways.
But what makes Mass Effect 3 make so high a spot on my list is the way it wraps of literally everything in the series. Remember all that stuff about the genophage in Mass Effect 1 and 2? Well this time you're gonna make a decision proper about what the hell to do with that ol' thing. Remember the geth and qurian squabble that essentially came to define both of them? Time to settle that bi'ness. Ancient aliens (no, no, not the Protheans, I mean the Old On-ohh forget it) actually get dealt with this time around.
But that's the tricky thing with Mass Effect 3. So much of what makes it great is standing on the shoulders of other really amazing games. Mass Effect 1 was absolutely fantastic, and Mass Effect 2 for what it lacks in overall plot development makes up for with stellar character development.
So much of what makes Mass Effect 3 amazing is seeing these other characters who you've already done the work getting to know in previous games show up here and there. Thane for example. Some of my fondest memories of ME2 is hanging around that bummer with the cool voice just learning about his culture, and himself. You get pretty much none of that in ME3. But when he shows up and kicks ass and subsequently kicks the bucket, it's powerful because of the work I put in a game ago.
That said, those final moments with your beloved companions are indeed well crafted. It's not enough to throw these characters into any situation and let the old games carry these new stories. The conclusions to these subplots are handled with care, and each send off packs quite the punch, right in your throat and makes it difficult to swallow.
And then there's the ending, which without any doubt was NOT handled with care. It really didn't feel like a case of BioWare putting faith in their audience to 'figure it out', it just felt rushed, plain and simple. Virtually everything up to that point feels like it was lovingly crafted with time and care. Each moment given enough time to resonate. But then when you get to the ending you're thrown a whole bunch of new shit to take in. Some people didn't mind, others did.
Which brings me to my biggest problem with Mass Effect 3. They simply don't spend enough time telling the Reaper story here. With Javik, the prothean companion, and the recent Leviathan DLC it's not hard to see a situation where the game was simply rushed out to market. Rather than getting the revelations we needed to get in Mass Effect 3 to make their ending not feel left field, they had to focus on tying up all the smaller plots because of all those connections made with the characters tied to those plots.
But the end result was a game that was obviously missing key parts. And now with those key parts filled in, it's hard not be frustrated by what was presumably a decision to get the game out rather than get it right.
While what they did get right is only really weighty because of the investment made into the franchise, it's damn right stuff nonetheless.
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Greg Kasavin. Seeing that man working on this game is the only thing that made me pay attention to it. Then he left, it went dark, and came back with an intriguing trailer highlighting the themes and choices to be made. And everyone thought, alright, maybe there'll be more to this game.
Then it comes out and the word is that it's got generic gameplay, a tacked-on multiplayer, but a different narrative. Like, real different. So I bite. And yes, it does indeed.
This game fucks with you. Let's just talk about the phosphorus scene right now shall we? It was alright. Definitely the point in the game you realize that this story is gonna be a different kind of story, but it was a bit transparent. Earlier you see the horrors of that weapon, and after making the choice to move the story forward and use it (because the enemies just seem to keep respawning should you try conventional killing methods), you kinda get what the game's doing. Yes, yes, these pips in your screen are just pips but after you finish off a bunch of pips that are obviously not a threat you'll see the horror you've beset unto these pips.
I was expecting it. What I wasn't expecting was to still be moved by it knowing full well what they were going for. Walking through the devastation was legitimately horrifying to watch as these humans, half-dead or fully without knowing it yet, were no glorified in their dire state. The game walked that very fine margin between preaching and glorifying, and all things came together in the end to feel like genuine terror.
It's a scene that you see coming but is handled with a degree of care to still be impactful. But then the game really starts to fuck with you. From all the horrors you come across following that turning point in the game, I was drawn into the character, and as he came to enjoy all the killing so did I. It felt right, like the single strand of justice in this entirely fucked up situation, my sense of justice.
But it was only when I/Walker were expressing our power in the chopper when the game clicked with me. Walker was really fucking into it. Like, really into it.
I actually had to stop because I had come to the realization that I don't know what the fuck I was doing in the game. Didn't remember the story, didn't know who I was killing, didn't know what I was going to that damn tower for, and didn't know what the hell my mission was. I was just shooting things. Literrally everything I thought I could damage I was shooting at. And it was just this fucking insane moment of clarity.
The game has an interesting narrative, it has generic shooter gameplay, and I didn't touch the multiplayer, but that goddamn way it made me feel at that moment. Like I was a total piece of shit for playing this game where I was shooting indiscriminatly at things made to represent human beings. It was... different.
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Well now I feel strange complementing the combat in this game after just writing about Spec Ops: The Line. I can't wait to reconcile with myself on that when I get to Hotline Miami (spoilers).
I can't say if this game was a revolution for MMOs like it set out to be, mainly because I was never that big on MMOs. I played a lot of Lineage 2 and a fair bit of World of Warcraft, along with dabbling in many free2play titles. But I never got too deeply into it. They were mostly things for me to hop in and hit things with lots of other people.
But from what little I did play of other MMOs and the general complaints I've absorbed from podcasts and forums threads and whatever, I knew enough that Guild Wars 2 changed the game, parts anyway.
First of all, the combat is a blast. This game feels a lot more like an action game than other MMORPGs, and the things they've done to streamline UI and classes in fantastic. You've got your five weapon skills based on what you have equipped, your four other skills that refine what sort of character you'd like to be, and your one healing skill, and your class specific skills which take up the F1 to F4 keys. That's it. No 8 skill bars, no holy trinity. Classes are focused more on what sort of gameplay you'd like rather than which of these three combat roles do you want to specialize in. Everyone can tank, everyone can heal, and everyone can dish out damage.
Also, everyone and work with everyone. No kill stealing means if you see someone attacking an enemy you don't have to keep going straight and make like they don't exist. Jump in and give em a hand, you'll both get the same goodness out of it. It's a game that encourages both random unstructured grouping and playing the game the way you want to. And it's really quite fun.
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It's not quite as open as Mount and Blade, but XCOM: Enemy Unknown has that toy-like quality to it, where I can create my own stories with the little that's in the game. Random soldiers become heroes not because the story calls for it, but because things just worked out that way.
Soldiers that get lucky with their shots are elevated to being more than just assets against the alien invasion. Soldiers that miss all the time but refuse to die become annoying friends than can't take a hint. And the death of a hero becomes a goddamn travesty, again not through any story, but just from playing it.
It's not emergent gameplay, it's emergent storytelling, and I'm the one telling the story, which is precisely what I mean when I refer to it being "toy-like". Also it's pretty unforgiving and incredibly addictive.
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You know, maybe the commentary in this game isn't too much unlike Spec Ops: The Line. The 'revelations' at the end have that same sort of moment of clarity, albeit not nearly as profoundly.
This game is a mess. A hot, flashing, foul-smelling but oddly enticing amalgamation of extreme violence, pixels, and the illest motherfucking collection of beats this side of Nintendo Land.
Just... play it.
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I never played the original Planetside, but it was always one of those things I heard about and wished I could've gotten into at the height of its popularity. So hearing that Planetside 2 is pretty much the same but with better shooting got me looking it up. Hearing that it's free to play got me both cautious and downloading.
It's not as epic (as in "An epic is traditionally a genre of poetry, known as epic poetry.[1] However in modern terms, epic is often extended to other art forms, such as novels, plays, films, music, epic theatre, video games, and television shows[1] where the story has a theme of grandeur and heroism[2], just as in epic poetry." Forever shall that word be tainted) as I thought, but it comes pretty damn close. Full platoons moving across a map, weaving through enemy tanks on an ATV as they fight allied tanks while overhead the airheads dance in the skies, jetpacking behind enemy lines and taking a small group out quietly allowing your team to advance, or just jumping over an enemy jet as it passed underneat you and crashed into a tower.
Really cool stuff.
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I don't know why people started to hate on Diablo 3. Oh wait, the endgame. Well then...
Before I got to the endgame of Diablo 3, I had a ton of fun with that little indie dungeon-crawler. Finding new loot, tweaking my Demon Hunter build, and just massacring demons was a real good time.
Then I hit the endgame and lost interest. Regardless, I got deep into this little game.
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Smash Bros. I love the first one. The rest are meh.
This looked like Smash Bros. I wasn't terribly offended that they decided to make a Smash-eque game, but it was odd. Then I played the beta, and I did not like it. Before uninstalling it I gave it another shot, and lo and behold the damn thing clicked with me. It moves like Smash Bros., but isn't! Crazy, I know.
Without a particular fondness for any PlayStation character, the roster didn't offend. It had Raiden in a cyborg suit, so my dreams of playing as Grey Fox could be semi-realized since killing Snake in VR Missions. But I never had any sort of deep connection with the things they were doing with this game, love or hate. It was just a fighting game that moved like Smash but required an additional level of strategy. And it was a blast to play, just like Smash Bros. (the first one), so that's good enough for me.
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