Finished in '14
My goal: The year I will stop buying games that cost more than $25 and I must immediately play what I have bought. If I really want the game, I must wait and save.
List items
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1/4/14. 360. I have two opinions about this game.
1) It is a great story. 2) It is a mediocre game. The ending is on par with the last game I beat, The Last of Us, in its impact and superb delivery. The music swells at all the right times. But the brothers are weirdly uncontrollable to me. It didn't click.
Every time I swapped them from left to right, my mind immediately wanted to control whoever was on the left with the left joystick. Does that make sense? I kept hoping I would learn to cope with this player dyslexia, but it wasn't until the ending did the game start to feel better -- a little too late. There's a weird lack of real challenge, of a variety of puzzles that grow. Yes, some of the puzzles get complicated, but not enough. It's simple, but in the wrong way.
In defense of the game, the epic moments are masterful. Even with my complaints, this is still a game to needs to be played and enjoyed. [4/5]
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1/8/14. 360.
First two hours: Ugh, this is terrible.
Next six hours: YEAH, THIS IS AWESOME.
Boss fights: Ugh, these are terrible.
Finished game, only at 39% finished, and the Enigma data packs and relays and escaped blackgate prisoners are all I have left, but I don't want to do it. After hunting down nearly all the Enigma things on the lower half, I realized that the number of packs is just ridiculous and tedious.
On Penguin's ship, I reached the ending point. Three way ground pressure switches that require precision I can't get with the character. I had forgiven the game at multiple points, for the crashing, for the awkward stuck in environments because of an animation, for the terrible boss fights, for the weird menu glitches that froze the game, but that... that was the last straw. The ultimate "fuck this shit" moment. I had the same issue with Arkham City, where the open-world just collided with Asylum in displeasing ways. To put it plainly, I want more Asylum, less City.
And what a terrible misused opportunity with the Christmas Eve theme, which felt tone-downed compared to the movie Batman Returns.
I also wish I had bought this for the WiiU, because the map on the screen would have been lovely. I feel like this may be a reoccuring theme for me.
So for me, this is a positive [3/5].
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1/12/14. 360. [TIME: 4:44:46.86] I just don't get the... hype? The story is pointless, the gameplay is mediocre, the boss battles are cheap, the environments really do look of PS2 quality (I kept thinking more along the lines of Earth Defense Force 2017), and it's short -- painfully short.
The padded cutscenes aren't even MGS-quality, with the final boss-battle being the most POS thing I've ever played. I kept yelling at the screen, "THIS ISN'T FUN." It went for Asura's Wrath crazy, but fails to deliver.
In the same year that DMC came out, MG Rising is just a terrible budget game. I'd rather it not exist, and I hate that I feel that way.
(Bayonetta looks and plays awesome compared to this game. What happened?) [1/5]
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2/4/14. 3DSXL. [TOTAL RUPEES FOUND: 18739. TIMES DEFEATED: 2.] I didn't want to play this. I was Zelda-ed out from last fall, having played quite a bit of Zelda last year. I was reluctant.
Once I started playing after Christmas, I slowly got into the world and how open it felt, which posed its own troubles when I became lost in Lorule. Once I realized that getting to the destinations in Lorule were puzzles in between the worlds, it clicked. I never lost any of my equipment, having bought everything as soon as I could.
Thanks to the game, everytime I hear a high-pitch squeak now in the world, I look for a Maiamai. [5/5]
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2/11/14. PS3. [An hour?] Plays like a European student game. I enjoyed my time, but wow, that's some weird motion control with the Dualshock. [2/5]
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2/12/14. PS3. Classic Ratchet game structure in a weird downloadable. Biggest annoyance: zombie robot pirates that turn the entire screen green. Yeah... [3/5]
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2/26/14. PS3, PS+. It's a beautiful game in need of a better combat system, better enemies, and more exploration of its memory remixing. A part of me would love to have explored Neo-Paris in a more Assassin's Creed aspect, climbing the sewer pipes and signs all the way to the roof and interacting with the public.
The game does have a wonderful visual world and glitch symphony composition. I would praise its story, but all the praise quickly unravels with the last boss fight. I want to see a sequel. [4/5]
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3/18/14. PS3. I have played this since the middle of February, unable to make long strides into completion because the formula is dry and you need breaks before it becomes monotonous. The Mario-Galaxy-like moons/dwarf planets are a welcome mini-game, one that actually uses the platforming in exciting ways, unlike the main game. The formula is starting to wear thin, but it's still fun. I can't head into R&CF: Into the Nexus just yet. We need some time apart. [Tried to 100% it, met some obstacles with collecting a few things that don't exist any more in the endgame.] [4/5]
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3/29/14. 360. Back in 2009, I loved this game and the departure it took from the PoP trilogy before. Colorful worlds in place of dull, earthy tans. The ending left a void that was never replaced with a sequel. Nearly five years later and having never played the DLC, I went through the whole game and the Epilogue. The orb collecting was a little dull then, even more so now. I understand that backtracking for the hidden orbs padded the playtime, but now I realize what was the biggest offender -- the fast travel. The orb collecting was underhanded by the fast travel, negating the exploratory reward of having to traverse through the adventure. The orbs are removed entirely from the Epilogue (replaced by slightly harder to get glowing frescos -- what?), they took the best misused part and deleted it.
As a timestamp of 2008, love seeing the traces of future Assassin Creed animations such as grabbing at ledges and climbing up cracks in the wall. The brilliant animation between the Prince and Princess is still the best thing to see in movement.
I read that the Epilogue was supposed to be a reaction to customer/critical feedback, and that saddens me because it took the colorful open world and forced the player on a one-way track through a bathhouse. I don't think I've had DLC ruin my game experience before as much as it has now. Yes, the added traversal puzzles are welcomed, the crank puzzles are still there but manageable, and the combat seems better. But the lack of an ending (it just keeps going till it just abruptly ends), the acting (or lack of it), and the trapped environment make me hate the game. Sorry.
[Game: 4/5; DLC: 2/5]
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3/31/14. 360. I'm in it for the roller coaster, and while it doesn't live up to MW2 for me and the fact that they killed off my favorite character of the series, I still enjoyed my time on these rails. [4/5]
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5/11/14. PS3. Slowly, as the PS3 has come back into my life, I have reevaluated my stance on my favorite console. The 360 seems to drag in my enthusiasm and the PS3 with its PS Plus game rewards seems to be building momentum. The controller fits better in my hands. I guess it's just my ebb and flow.
Now I'm going back to get all the PS3 games I missed, and Journey was on the list. I had been waiting for it to go on sale, but then I thought getting a 1-month free trial of Gamefly would be a better way to play.
I didn't think this was going to be the game that made me fall back in love with an interactive medium (everything in the last three months have felt tedious, as if I was waiting for the right moment for the right game). The first thirty minutes are intriguing but shallow, and then another person joined my game and we played until the end, chirping in support along the way. It's amazing that the game made me feel as if I was playing with my best friend, and we both had never played the game before. When he was hurt, I waited, and when I became focused on extending my scarf, he waited.
Amazing.
[5/5]
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5/17/14. PS3. It's taken months to go through this game. I was never any good picking up on the differences between the truth/doubt/lie faces, often failing miserably. The ending feels... unfinished and the implementation of DLC helps establish that feeling. It's a jack-of-all trades, but not excellent at any. It's a good [3/5].
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5/18/14. PS3. Oh, I forgot what the quality level of Telltale games used to be: borderline terrible. [2/5]
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5/20/14. PS3. I read the reviews of the recent Amazing game, felt disappointed, and thought about how great Web of Shadows was. Rented the game, and realized there was a moment in my life when I thought this was actually good. I played Prototype before, but somehow I thought this was just as good. It's not. Prototype still holds up, this doesn't. When you hear the cry that Web of Shadows was the last great Spider-Man game, you should feel immediately sad. [2/5]
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6/1/14. PS3. Oh, the places you will go.
The revolving band of companions, the sheer variety of enemies, and the world-exploring collect-o-thon make this game one of the best RPGs I have played. In some ways, this is an adult, major-budget Costume Quest.
Weird issues like framerate drops, missing dialogue (thank goodness I had subtitles on), and some of the worst motherfucking mini-games any one has ever created -- really, abortion mini-games, bard music mini-games, learning how to fart mini-games, stop the alien probing device from forcibly sodomizing a male character mini-game... Sigh.
[4/5]
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6/8/14. PSN. A marked improvement over the first episode. Less exploring, more story moments. Still, it has some janky tank controls and frequent texture pop-in's. [3/5]
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6/8/14. PSN. Oh, no, they really are going to be using the same environments for the whole series. I'm sure a fascist take on Doc is a great idea, but what happens is just a wreck of a story. 2/5.
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6/13/14. PS3. Wheelman is a game worth playing. Absolutely. It's worth playing because you need to know how not to make an open-world game and how not to make shitty car combat. At first, the colorful world of Barcelona is a breath of fresh air, the random Gaudi-inspired buildings, the quite large traffic circles, the open roads and sidewalks... all aspects that make traversing fast and fun. Once introduced to the car-hopping, it seems revelatory, except after the first hour it becomes apparent that it's a cheat way to deal with the shitty car combat. Each time you have a fight with a rival gang, where two motorcycles shoot at you with automatic weapons and a car is bashing at your ass, you slowly realize that this is all the game is -- endless fucking combat until you reach your goal, swapping cars once yours is about to explode, the enemies never-ending. It's a bad beat-em-up with cars.
The story is not why you come here. If the Wheelman was actually a movie script, then fuck, it would have been laughed off the movie theaters. Side characters have long scenes of exposition, with a single, bad, one line from Vin Diesel making all that time and energy worthless.
Everything was still going okay in the game early-on; I thought it would be this campy, weird car game, but then they had to add bloodless scenes of mass shooting to the game with some of the worst cover mechanics and guns that feel as fake as they look and sound. I wished it was just about him being behind the wheel and that's it. Around this point, the player can start shooting from his car and is required to do so to survive. But the uncontrollable camera and the terrible white-to-red reticle just make it a chore to play. The last three missions left a foul taste in my mouth, causing repeat missions that made me just yell at the TV: "This, THIS is not fun."
I'm glad this exists, I really do, because it helps highlight how good Driver: San Francisco really is.
[1/5]
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6/25/14. PS3. There really aren't many FPS that feels like Resistance, which is a mixed reaction. I can a lot of reactionary content that addresses gameplay and story issues from the first two games. Rather than trying to save the planet, you are trying to save your family -- generic in premise, but executed well. The journey from Oklahoma to New York City also felt tiring in the way a trip of that magnitude would feel. There's something special about this game. [4/5]
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6/29/14. 360. An important game, for sure, that touches on some powerful moments, a war that is often overshadowed by WWII. The historical facts that become available at the start of each mission, merits honor for giving back-story that provides a realistic back-drops, and the historical collectibles are what makes the game extremely re-playable. [5/5]
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7/24/14. 3DS. I just spent over 30 hours in two weeks playing my least favorite Pokemon game. Fuck that world map and central city hub. Fuck those stupid new monsters. Damm it's still great. [4/5].
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7/29/14. 360. [3/5]
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7/31/14. Nexus 7. [4/5]
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8/2/14. Nexus 7. [4/5]
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