Inspired by the recent Bombcast, where the crew did... the exact thing I'm doing now, I will be going through my favourite non-gaming-related things of 2023. This is to prove to the world that I am a well-rounded person and not a total freak who does nothing but play video games for the majority of the time. Now, these are not in order, so let's get started.
Smeg Automatic Coffee Machine
Do you know what's better than a $1200 coffee machine? A free $1200 coffee machine. Yeah, we won this thing in a prize raffle a few months ago, and I would say it's life-changing. I used to have to press my coffee, and it was a pain in the ass. Now I press two buttons, and out comes hot, perfect expresso coffee. I would never pay what Smeg is asking for, but if $1200 is not significant for you, this is worth it.
Spiderman: Across the Spider-Verse
What a fucking movie Across the Spider-Verse is. The first one was one of my favourite movies of that year, Across the Spider-Verse is my favourite western animated movie ever. It is just incredible how amazing this movie looks. Even with so many different styles, the movie still has a cohesive look that borders on witchcraft. Not to mention an excellent story and characterisation. If I could watch one upcoming movie right now, it would be Beyond the Spider-Verse. I am dying to see it.
Bocchi the Rock and the Kessoku Band Album
I adore Bocchi the Rock. A show about an introverted guitarist starting a band with her friends seems like a played-out premise, but how it's told makes it unique. It uses animation to its greatest strength by changing the show's style to depict Bocchi's... uh… moments. One scene in Bocchi the Rock could be using live-action or 3D animation, early 90s-styled anime, or a weird board game. It is so confident and expressive in its visual storytelling that you might forget the show is funny and relatable. I also wanted to mention the Kessoku Band album they released. It is an excellent Japanese pop-rock album used to perfection in the show. Unlike K-ON! it is strong enough to stand on its own. Kessoku Band's cover of Asian Kung-Fu Generation's Korogaru Iwa, Kimi ni Asa ga Furu, is my favourite and most played song of the year.
I Finished A Video Game
I love some stupidly long video game retrospective and analysis videos, but they are becoming unhinged. As much as I love Noah Caldwell-Gervais, Action Button and PatricianTV, they seem to go on and on and on. That is where I Finished A Video Game comes in. Yes, his videos are still 4 to 8 hours long each, but what makes him different is that he makes his points and moves on to the next game or topic. He doesn't spend 90 minutes on the Skyrim Dark Brotherhood Questline. He spends 20 minutes on one Castlevania game and moves on. This makes it soooo much more accessible to watch than any other video game analysis person on YouTube, which is why he's become one of my favourites.
Another thing I like about him is he doesn't always pick topics that are done to death. I never need to listen to another god damn Dark Souls analysis but a 4-hour video on random Indiana Jones games? Yes, please! Please give him a try.
Gunther vs Sheamus vs McIntyre
If there was ever a match that defined the phrase 'big meaty men slapping meat', it's the Wrestlemania Intercontinental Championship Match between Gunther, Sheamus and Drew McIntyre. Just three massive dudes smashing the shit out of each other. Many of the best matches of the year featured guys like Will Ospreay and Bryan Danielson, technical masters of their craft. However, sometimes you want bears mauling each other, and that's exactly what this match was. It's hard-hitting and brutal stuff. I love it, and it's available for free on YouTube!
Cracker Island
Gorillaz are finally back to form after their last few middling albums. Cracker Island returns to Gorillaz's grimy poppy roots while being weird in its mood and instrumentation. Songs like Tired Influencer and Oil bring me back to the days of Plastic Beach, whereas stuff like Silent Running could easily be on their debut album. They also use outside artists to their strengths, unlike the last few times where it felt like they just wanted a name on their songlist. Stevie Nicks, Tame Impala and Bad Bunny feel right at home, whereas I felt like Snoop Dogg, Robert Smith, and Elton John felt like they were on previous albums just cause they wanted them on their album. Hopefully, this trend of Good Gorillaz stuff will continue.
Hey-EW
If you had told me my favourite All Elite Wrestling thing of 2023 would be the interview comedy show on their YouTube channel, I'd have called you crazy. Hey-EW is basically Between Two Ferns but with wrestlers (and occasionally drunk actors), and it is fantastic. RJ City is probably their most underrated and underused talent, and I don't even want to see him wrestle. All of them are pretty good, but my favourite is his interview with Adam Copeland, where they talk about everything from Money Plane to underage smoking. Good stuff.
VIBE Soda
I've never had to write a paragraph on a soda before, but damnit, I will try. VIBE soda is tasty, low in sugar and cheap. I buy multiple 4-pack every time I see them, and I think the most I've seen them at is 6 dollars. I'm trying to drink less soft drink and more water, but every once in a while, I'll drink one of these and not feel like I'm going to die. VIBE good.
Andy Math
How much of a math dork must you be to have a favourite math YouTuber? I bet it's a lot. Andy Math doesn't teach you how to solve problems, but he shows you what the mathematical thought process should look like. He sees a problem and, in straightforward terms, shows you his mathematical process to solve it. I would never use him to teach a specific thing in geometry but to show what excellent mathematical problem-solving skills look like. He makes math look like fun. How exciting.
gg.Deals
I don't buy any games anymore without checking gg.Deals. The single best deal aggregator online. It collects every legitimate storefront, crunches the numbers, and shows you the best deals for whatever game you want. It features some of the best filtering I've seen on any website and includes Xbox and Playstation storefronts. My only real complaint is that it does not have Nintendo's digital store. Besides that, it is the perfect website for finding the best game deals. I could not even begin to calculate how much this website saved me.
It was the best year for video games; it was the worst year for video games. The year 2023 will be remembered with joyful glee or utter misery, depending on which side of the video game you are on. Game developers probably had the worst year I’ve ever seen. Studio closures, layoffs, excessive crunch, and that’s on top of the other bullshit they usually have to deal with. Conversely, video game players had perhaps one of the best years in recent memory, so I believe this year was fantastic for playing games. I finally managed to get a PlayStation 5 and had enough time in the year to play some missed classics and old favourites. However, despite having the time to play through Ape Escape on a whim, there were some games I missed, so apologies to Pizza Tower, Octopath Traveller II, Tron: Identity, Dead Island 2, Street Fighter 6, AEW Fight Forever, Rise of the Triad: Ludicrous Edition, Armored Core VI, Making of Karateka, System Shock, Robocop Rogue City, Fashion Dreamer and Chants of Sennaar. Maybe I’ll have time next year.
System Shock is the perfect subject for a ‘from the ground up’ remake. System Shock came out at a time when 3D gaming on PC still had not been figured out yet, where choices were made that (with nearly 30 years of hindsight) made the game difficult to control, let alone play. But here comes the famed PC FPS port masters Nightdive Studios to lovingly remake the game with the same ideals and general concepts but with the ability to aim like a proper shooter instead of clicking around like a desktop, among other improvements. However, it came out at the end of May when I was still in my Tears of the Kingdom hole desperately trying to finish it before Diablo IV, so alas, System Shock remains unplayed. I do not doubt that when it goes on a good sale, I will pick it up and play the hell out of it.
You know that scene in the Simpsons episode ‘Kamp Krusty’ where Lisa is shocked to find the camp serves gruel when the staff informs her that it’s actually ‘Krusty Brand Imitation Gruel’? I was in the mood for a mindless video game. I could just turn my brain off and hit the buttons until the numbers go up. So I paid Blizzard waaaay too much money on release day for what I consider to be the ‘Krusty Brand Imitation Gruel’ of video games: Diablo IV. A tasteless grey sludge that, while technically ticks all the boxes for a “video game”, is utterly devoid of any flavour or soul. I was honestly shocked at how extreme the mindlessness is. There is nothing in this game to engage or excite the player. You walk around a drab, bland environment, smacking all the different kinds of skeletons and weird little imps until a piece of gear that looks like all the other pieces of gear you have seen drops. After which, you get a 2% increase in whirlwind damage or whatever, and then repeat for 50 hours. I hope that Microsoft fixes whatever the fuck is wrong with Blizzard; otherwise, I am going to have to rename this award after them.
I'll admit, I got the raft stuck quite a few times.
The best surprises are the ones you don’t even see coming. Tchia was not even on my radar. It was just another random indie game about fishing and farming or whatever. But I had just bought a PlayStation 5 and happened to resubscribe during the month Tchia had just come out on PlayStation Plus. So, I thought I would give this a try. It was not the fishing and farming game, I was led to believe, but a fantastic open-world action-adventure game of the highest quality. I have never played a video game that felt so ingrained in the culture of the people making it. I truly felt like I was there on those islands, engaging with the people of Uma. Sure, there are games with better graphics, more engaging gameplay and fewer bugs, but even the biggest, most funded triple-A studios struggle to place the player in a place so thoroughly. The whole point of video games is to transport you to another world, and no game has done that better this year than Tchia.
A game that looks this good while running so smoothly seems like witchcraft.
Insomniac Games is the best triple-A studio working today, and games like Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart are the reason why. It is simply an incredibly polished, well-designed, gorgeous-looking video game. So many video game studios try to cram as much stuff in their games as possible. “This is an action-adventure game, but it also must have an RPG loot system, side quests, vehicle customisation, and dialogue trees, and it also must have a huge environment and multiplayer”. Insomniac basically just took the core concept of a standard platformer, added a few next-generation tricks and polished the everloving shit out of it. It is a tight 15 to 20-hour experience of excellent platforming action and an absolute blast. I don’t think it would have been my Game of the Year for 2021 if I had played it then, but it would have been in the discussion.
We all know that Karlach, on the surface, is that big-muscle, dominating woman type that every freak (including me) absolutely loves. She is the embodiment of that quote from Cowboy Bebop: “I love the kind of woman that can kick my ass”. But despite appearances, Karlach is so much more than a big muscle lady. She is a charming, intelligent, kind and emotionally deep person who stands out from a cast that is also filled with unforgettable characters. She is both a joy to be around and an essential character in battle. I don’t think she left my party a single time ever since I found her. The team over at Larian, as well as Samantha Béart, the actress who plays her, has created an absolutely fantastic RPG character who stands shoulder-to-shoulder with some of the best companions in RPGs. She is the Mordin Solus, Kim Kitsuragi and Eunie of Baldur’s Gate III.
This is the man that brought you the best soundtrack of the year.
The best video game music puts you in that place just by listening to it. When you listen to ‘Uncharted Worlds’, you are transported to the Normandy. When you hear ‘Beneath the Mask’, you are transported to Leblanc. The music in Tchia does that to me. Whenever I listen to ‘Ö ngo eka’, I am eating dinner with the dad on that little island. When I listen to ‘Sailing, ' I’m on the raft heading towards Aemoon. When I listen to ‘Chez nous à Weliwele’, I’m at that party in Weliwele. Quite a few soundtracks have that effect on me, but what makes Tchia’s music so different is that every song feels so personal and authentic. It feels like I’m listening to a New Caledonian playing traditional music for their children, which is an exceptionally rare quality in video game soundtracks. John Robert Matz has made something special with this soundtrack.
Seriously, look at this drawing. Look how good it looks translated.
One of my great regrets in life was not trying to learn Japanese in any serious capacity. Now, I lack the free time and drive to learn, so when a game I’ve wanted to play has a fan translation patch suddenly released, I am overjoyed. But this specific patch for Boku no Natsuyasumi 2 is beyond what a typical fan translation is in that it shames proper official licenced releases. This production is not merely translating the dialogue and being done with it; they did everything they could to preserve the original experience. For example, they took Boku's drawings he makes after every event and not only translated the written text but localised it so that it is seamlessly reincorporated back into the drawing like Boku himself wrote it. Half the time, companies like Crunchyroll and Netflix don’t even translate written text at all, and here we have a small group of unpaid volunteers who make that translation work almost invisible. Hilltop and those who help them are absolute masters of this kind of work. If I were Sony I would be hashing out a deal to make this an official release as soon as possible. Give this team all the money.
Fire Emblem Engage Award for Character Design: Alear (Female) (Fire Emblem Engage)
*chef kiss*
This category only exists because I want to gush about how much I adore the character designs in Fire Emblem Engage. Every character in this game is so over-designed, so bright and colourful, so gaudy that I just cannot help myself but love it. Almost every character has like four to five things that really did not need to be there or be designed that way but are there anyway. From Ivy’s weird little hat thing that covers half her face, Timerra, who has about 40 coloured balls hanging off her clothes, Rosado’s transgendered coloured hair cat ears and Panette's weird Halloween mouth thing she has going on. However, the absolute peak character design and the inspiration for this category is the Female MC Alear. Just look at her. Her white-gold cuirass that appears to go down into a mini skirt, armoured boots with stockings and a garter belt, and the most *amazing* red and blue coloured hair that is also somehow plot-relevant. Few game developers are brave enough to make a character look like that, let alone the player character and the character front and center on the box art. They are absolutely masters of their craft. Here’s hoping we get more designs like this in the future.
Danny O'Dwyer and the crew over at Noclip are doing the Lord’s work by unearthing and, more importantly, preserving all these video game events and trailers. Watching the 2006 Sony Playstation press conference in a video quality that could have easily been filmed in the last few years is absolutely mind-blowing. But it’s not just higher quality footage but stuff the public has never seen: A Knights of the Old Republic demo from 2001, a Neverwinter Nights demo from 2000, and numerous trailers for cancelled games. Stuff that would have never seen the light of day if Noclip hadn’t stepped in and saved those tapes. The best part is that Noclip has uploaded all those videos, unedited and uncompressed, for free on Archive.org. Most publications would slap their awful watermark logo on these videos, but Noclip is better than that, and the history of video games is now better for it.
Sorry but by viewing this image you'll need to pay Unity
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the word ‘baffling’ means something that is “extremely confusing or difficult to understand”. That is a perfect descriptor of the video game engine maker Unity's decision earlier this year when they announced they would charge developers who use their engine a fee for every install. That’s already a baffling decision, but it’s even more compounded when that fee will be charged for retroactive installs, a choice I can only assume was the result of the C-Suite having a colossal case of massive brain rot. Like, seriously, what the fuck was going through their mind when they thought of that?! That decision has destroyed Unity as those who use it either change engines or abandon projects, leaving only those stuck on the engine to deal with this. They did walk it back, but you cannot really walk something back when you shoot your foot, leg, other leg and lower torso off.
And yes, this category will be renamed next year to the ‘Unity Lifetime Achievement Award for Most Baffling Decision’. Sorry, Atlus.
This game had me at “Brought to you by the creators of Persona 3, Persona 4 and Persona 5”. The next game from director Katsura Hashino, character artist Shigenori Soejima, and music composer Shoji Meguro? Hell yes, I am absolutely hyped for this game. Persona 5 was a once-in-a-generation game, so I assumed that Persona 6 would be the next game, and while I am still excited about a Persona game done by an entirely new team, I am even more excited about an all-new experience. Unlike the previous game, Catherine, Metaphor will still be a JRPG at its core, so all the experience and knowledge from making the amazing Persona games will come together and make something truly special. I am dying to play this game, and if the announcement trailer is anything to go by, it won’t be long.
For many, including myself, Starfield wasn’t the game everyone hoped for. After waiting so long for Bethesda’s first original game in 25 years, I hoped for something better than ‘It’s good’. With that said, I still enjoyed my time with Starfield. It is still that immersive and detailed Bethesda-style RPG that I love that I cannot get anywhere else. I am hoping that with patches and the promised DLC, Starfield will have a Cyberpunk 2077 moment where, after a while, everything realigns and clicks together.
#9 - Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Future Redeemed DLC
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 was my Game of the Year last year, so I was pretty hyped to see the DLC continue that with an all-new story. What I wasn’t expecting was such an excellent blend of the narrative and mechanics of all three Xenoblade games. The series has always had an issue with an over-bloated length, so having what is, in my eyes, a trimmed Xenoblade experience made an already enjoyable game more so. Add to that the series trademark combat systems and excellent music; you got quite the excellent experience in Future Redeemed.
#8 - Boku no Natsuyasumi 2: Umi no Dai Bouken
A fully completed English translation patch for Boku no Natsuyasumi 2 was released this year, so I am considering it a 2023 game. Boku 2 is basically a developer taking the summer vacation experience of a Japanese grade-schooler in the 70s and transporting players to that time. It’s probably the closest thing to an autobiographical game ever released. It invokes that scene of place and time so masterfully that it honestly feels that this was a real place with real people. While most of the credit has to go to Millennium Kitchen, the excellent translation work by Hilltop must be mentioned, for without it, no one outside of Japanese-speaking people would get to experience such a joyful video game.
#7 - Tchia
Tchia is the best example I can think of a developer taking an entire culture and transporting it into a video game. Every little piece of these game feels authentic and genuine, that it is almost scary that it was done with a small team. Everything from the clothes, the way people speak, and the music, to the environment design just radiates New Caledonia. But it’s not just a fantastic environment to walk around, but an excellent adventure and exploring game that’s basically a mini Breath of the Wild. It's easily the most impressive indie game I have played in a while; you all owe it to yourself to play Tchia.
#6 - Persona 5 Tactica
I love the Persona games, but not all the Persona spinoffs have hit, even if you ignore Persona 5 fatigue. But what makes Persona 5 Tactica different is that this is not some other video game with a Persona skin slapped on it as it was with Persona 5 Strikers and Persona Q2, but an entirely original and relatively better-than-expected Tactics game. It is one of those games where you need to have 5 moves ahead already planned out and when you execute those plans, oh how it’s satisfying. It just has the flow to it that makes the game feel so much better than it has any right to be. On top of the series' standard best-in-the-world graphic design and killer soundtrack, they went out with a bang if this is Phantom Thieves swan song.
#5 - Fire Emblem Engage
Fire Emblem Engage is basically a Saturday morning cartoon masquerading as a tactics game. It is so goddamn goofy and delightful that I just cannot help myself. All the characters are loveable dorks, the plot is filled with tropes to the point of absurdity, and the dialogue has that earnest cringe that just somehow works. But Nintendo couldn’t just stop there, so they made one of the best tactical battle systems ever made. Three Houses had an unexpectedly profound effect on me, and while Engage did not reach quite that high, it is still a fantastic tactics game. It also has Yunaka in it, pushing it up like 4 spaces.
#4 - Final Fantasy XVI
Final Fantasy XVI is that big, mainstream, stupidly expensive RPG that has been missing from the industry for the last few decades. It is a huge and narratively complex game that takes dozens of hours to complete and it has been the kind of game I have been yearning for years. That spectacle is the reason I bought a Playstation 5 so it had a lot of live up for and it met those expectations. A twisting narrative that makes you sit at the edge of your seat, fantastic characters and featuring some of the acting I have seen in a game, from multiple characters. It has a lore codex system that completely blows away everything else. Final Fantasy XVI is a game well worth buying a console for.
#3 - Super Mario Bros. Wonder
If the human emotion of joy could be pressed onto a Nintendo Switch cartridge, Super Mario Bros Wonder would pop out. I struggle to write something about this game without resorting to the most obvious thing in the world, but I cannot help it: it is a wonderful game. Everything in this game bleeds that sense of wonder, from the colourful graphics, incredible music, perfect controls, and wonder seed effects. Everything in this game just makes me happy during a period of hardship as we are currently in. It made me have a big stupid smile on my face the entire time I was playing, and I cannot say that about anything else that came out this year.
#2 - Baldur's Gate 3
Who would have seen this coming? Baldur’s Gate III is easily the best fantasy RPG I have ever played and I have played a lot. It is the perfect blend of complex game systems with a triple-A presentation. It has a fantastic complex but versatile combat system; it has an environment design that is both detailed and vast, it has the best overall voice acting this year; it has so many ways to complete objectives that it is mindblowing that it came out as functional as it did. Baldur’s Gate III was my most anticipated game last year, and it well earned that accomplishment. It will be a game I will keep coming back to repeatedly.
#1 - The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
I have never played a video game like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, which is a funny thing to say, considering that it’s basically a glorified Breath of the Wild expansion.
There is this thing in video games that you often see where an increase in scope comes with an increase in rough edges. You see it all the time in open-world games: you get stuck in level geometry, you fall through the environment, NPCs are floating in the air, two trees are clipping into each other. It is something you just have to accept. Tears of the Kingdom is one of the most open video games I have ever played, and it did not do anything like that in the 70 hours I played. Despite being able to go anywhere, stick any random thing to any other random thing, or do any objective in any order, it all just works. Games with half this scope fall apart at the seams, but Nintendo has done the seemingly impossible and made a flawless massive open world with player mechanics that would wreck any other game, all while running on 7-year-old hardware that was underpowered at launch. It honestly made most other developers look like absolute clowns.
They made a vastly improved sequel to a game that, let me remind you, was Breath of the Wild, one of the best video games ever made. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is my Game of the Year for 2023.
This year has been a bit of a disappointing year. Between the Series X and PS5 still being challenging to find and multiple big games being delayed, 2022 seemed like the kind of the year that was kind of... meh? A few big games were released this year, but that’s it: only a few big games. In other years it’s banger after banger, but throughout most of the year, we did not see a lot of triple-A or even big indie games. I was convinced in August that there would be at least two games on my list that I did even really like. Thankfully, I found ten games I enjoyed, so I am putting together this list and special awards for the first time ever.
I don't know what is even happening here but it's enthralling.
I am fascinated by Dwarf Fortress. Seemingly endless in complexity but with its Steam release, it is as accessible as it’s going to get. I wanted to get into Dwarf Fortress for a long time, but the ASCII art, lack of mouse control and lack of tutorials were all deal breakers but fixed with the Steam release. Unfortunately, it came out right as Christmas was getting into gear and, as such, was drained of disposable income. Alas, Dwarf Fortress remains unplayed. However, there is an excellent chance that I will have bought and played Dwarf Fortress by the time you read this.
There is no greater tragedy in the video game industry than the state of Blizzard. What was once the best video game developer in the world whose every release would revolutionise whatever genre they chose has now been reduced to a company that every time I see them trending, I think, ‘Oh god, what did they do now?’. Even if you ignore all the horrible stuff happening at the company behind closed doors, Blizzard’s output has been embarrassing at best. Yes, they occasionally pull off a World of Warcraft: Dragonflight, but you have to get through a Warcraft III: Reforged, Diablo Immortal and the winner of this “award” – Overwatch 2. A sequel to a game that I sunk 100s of hours into, which now is a game I might play once or twice a month. Between the lack of the promised single-player mode, terrible Battlepass/microtransactions, completely borked game balance and the continued adoption of Role Queue, Overwatch 2 is not only the biggest disappointment of the year but potentially killed a franchise I once loved. I pray that Microsoft can pull Blizzard back into shape.
Aww jeez, oh man High on Life.. oh uhhhh.. a really good like game type thing... and i... oh jeez
My experience with Justin Roiland’s work was one playthrough of his VR game Accounting+. Never saw Rick and Morty, Solar Opposites or anything else he has done. His humour and style of writing, while not repulsive as some people think, definitely was not something I gravitated towards. However, the reveal trailers showed me a goofy, gorgeous-looking first-person shooter, which I believe is a genre that is lacking. I was sold as long as it wasn’t as annoying as Borderlands 3. Well, High of Life was much, much better than I expected. While the humour and writing didn’t blow me away, it got some laughs out of me, which is more than most comedy games get. I did not expect solid shooter mechanics and level design on top of the best-looking game this year. This is not Doom Eternal, but it’s enjoyable enough to warrant praise. I started High on Life to see how bad it was; I finished High on Life because of how good it was.
We don't talk about what happened to Arthas in Shadowlands
World of Warcraft, at least a particular era of World of Warcraft, is my favourite game of all time. Going on an adventure of a lifetime, through fantastical areas, battling Murlocs and joining with other like-minded people is a feeling I will probably never experience again. However, Wrath Classic was like a nostalgia trip through that era of time. This version is not some remade game with new graphics and quests. It just is Wrath of the Lich King, again. That’s all it needed to be, and I love it for that. Games aren’t made in this way anymore. With a focus on player adoption and attention, almost all games of the MMO mould try to be as assessable as possible. That is not necessarily bad; more people should have the chance to play more games.
But a consequence of this philosophy is that everything must be accessible to everyone, even if it’s a detriment to the game overall. Quests will highlight areas on the map for objectives, dungeons automatically pair you with other players and teleport you straight there, and enemies are scaled to your level. World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Classic brings me back to that sense of adventure where quests tell you that you need to go west down the road and north at the big tree. Where dungeon groups need to be created by talking to other players and physically walking there. Where wandering into Duskwood is going to result in you getting stomped. It turned World of Warcraft back into an adventure rather than a chat room.
When they announced a sequel to AI: The Somnium Files, I was pretty stoked about it, but one part of the announcement was the thing that made me want to buy it on day one: Mizuki Date was going to be the player character. Fuck. Yes. Mizuki is a short-tempered, tomboy-ish girl from the original who is now a badass detective with smacks people with a neon-lighted lead pipe. Going through AI: The Somnium Files – Nirvana Initiative’s plot as her made an honestly entertaining visual novel much more enjoyable. She and Aiba were a delight to see and made the experience much better. To be frank, the whole cast is excellent, but Mizuki stands out.
This game 'Pavlov's dogs' me to flute music and crying
Those motherfuckers over at Monolithsoft did it again. They always bring out the best when making music for the Xenoblade Chronicles series, but they nailed it with Xenoblade Chronicles 3. Not only did that craft a stellar score by Yasunori Mitsuda and his team, but how they incorporated the music sets it apart from every other game this year. From the gorgeous flutes of ‘A Life Sent On’, the driving violins of ‘The Weight of Life’ to the reuse of themes from previous games such as ‘Toward the Heavens’ and ‘Ancient Memories’, every piece of music has a purpose to the broader narrative and themes. It is used throughout Xenoblade Chronicles 3 perfectly. It is the best soundtrack in a series of best soundtracks.
When I played Larian Studios’ last game, Divinity: Original Sin 2, I thought, ‘This is the greatest RPG I’ve ever played’. It would have been my Game of the Year had I played it at release. Since then, I have been going through CRPGs trying to find a game to fill that void: Pillars of Eternity, Wasteland, Pathfinder and even Divinity: Original Sin 1 all failed to meet the high standards of Original Sin 2. Finally, after years of waiting for whatever they did next, they released a sequel to probably the most influential CRPG of all time: Baldur’s Gate III… in Early Access. Early Access as a tool to help develop a game is fine and good, but this was Larian’s next game. I did not want to spend dozens of hours on a bug-filled mess only to be stopped at the end of Chapter 1. So I waited, and waited, and waited for a release date or anything signifying a release, and after two years, I finally have a release window. Every once in a while comes a game where you take time off work to play it. The last one for me was Metal Gear Solid V: Phantom Pain. I’m confident that my next one for me will be Baldur’s Gate III.
Rogue Legacy 2 continues its simple yet refined formula of Rogue-inspired platformers without changing the formula too much. But the changes they do make create a better version of the original with more traits to get, a more significant focus on exploration and more secrets to poke an oversized sword at. Rogue Legacy 2 will be installed on my computer for a long time.
Perhaps the most creatively weird game released this year, the humour is not for everyone but with solid shooting mechanics, gorgeous visuals and the most creative boss fight in years, High on Life is the kind of game I wish more studios and publishers took risks in developing. I look forward to whatever Justin Roiland and Squanch Games do next.
Teardown is just a super cool thing to mess around with. The campaign is not great and having to unlock items is a pain, but the destruction technology on top of best-in-class mod supports means I don’t even need the campaign to enjoy Teardown. Just give me a replica of the Statue of Liberty, a gun that shoots mini-nukes and a PC with an excellent CPU, and I can make dozens of hours slip away.
I honestly don’t even know what to type here. Vampire Survivors is just a dopamine hit on a Steam page. Vampire Survivors seemingly came out of nowhere and became the most prominent indie hit since Among Us. Its extremely simple concept and execution means anyone can pick up, play and get addicted. It is a game I will always have on my PC and always just boot up and play for hours.
MORE GAMES NEED TO TAKE PLACE IN OVERSIZED BEDROOMS AND HOUSES. There I said it. Tinykin harkens back to the days of Super Mario 64 and Banjo Kazooie, where all you need to great controls and solid level designs, and you got yourself a video game. Tinykin takes it one step further by using the ‘small person, big room’ aesthetic and running with it. With the excellent level design, inventive platforming mechanics and a weird but pleasing character design, Tinykin was a wonderful surprise to find this year.
Look, I know I said Blizzard is a terrible company that makes bad games in my awards section, but I will give credit where credit is due. Dragonflight is great. A massive beautiful land to explore with many secrets to find, new reputation and crafting systems that make me want to engage with it and Dragonriding, the best mechanic added to World of Warcraft since Transmogrification. Dragonflight will be my go-to night game until Blizzard almost assuredly fucks it up.
Nirvana Initiative is an excellent example of an improved sequel. They crafted a wonderfully bizarre and somewhat confusing story. That was a given. But they also made a much better playable character with Mizuki, completely rehauling the Somnium sections, making them fun to play, and giving the player more to do in the investigation sections. It also has the best dance number of the year, again. AI: The Somnium Files - Nirvana Initiative is a crazy, wild, and fun rollercoaster ride to Weirdtown.
Nightmare Reaper is my happy place. Here is a randomly generated level with a bunch of monsters, and here are some weapons that are entirely fucked up. It doesn’t have a great story, the soundtrack is more annoying than enjoyable, and it has the single worst upgrade system I have seen in years, but its core shooting is top-of-the-line superb. It is a game that continually surprises you, and you always want to keep moving forward. I am going to be playing Nightmare Reaper until I get Nightmare Reaper 2.
I have a weird relationship with Elden Ring. It came out on February 25th, and about a day or two later, my town was severely flooded. I couldn’t get to my workplace, the Internet was down, and all major roads near my house were inaccessible. So, I played Elden Ring. A lot. Like 10 to 12 hours a day a lot. I finished 95 hours of Elden Ring in a week. That is not a typo. Elden Ring will always be that game that kept me sane for that week. It helps that it is one of the best open-world games ever made, on top of having incredible art direction and excellent boss fights. Even though I am 100% sick of FromSoftware’s Souls games, this was their best.
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is my favourite type of game.
It is a game with an extensive emotional story with a cast of lovable characters that you want to see succeed and win. It is a game with a large open world with many different side quests and areas to find. It is a game with a deep combat system you can completely get yourself lost in. It has a varied musical score that makes you tear up just listening to it. It is a graphical showcase with a massive scale and extreme details. It has cat girls and bird girls.
I don’t really have a favourite genre, but I have a favourite game type: adventure. A game that takes you to a world and allows you to explore and experience everything the world has to offer, whether that’s the landscape, the people, the story and even the mechanics. It’s the same feeling I got playing games like World of Warcraft, Morrowind and Breath of the Wild. It is a game I always want to play and Xenoblade Chronicles 3 gave me that experience and then some. It is my Game of the Year, and it is well-deserving.
I’ve been attending university to become a teacher for quite a while now. I remember starting back in 2017 being completely overwhelmed and have been busting my butt since doing an enormous amount of theory. Lots of reports on child development, theorists, higher-level calculus and a never-ending demand for lesson plans. So many lesson plans. But five weeks ago, I got to do my very first practical experience. Twenty-five days of being inside an actual class in an actual school with actual students teaching a real lesson on everything from multiplication to Asian cultures. It was a wonderful experience, and it was the highest of highlights even in a year that wasn’t… you know… now.
I finished these five weeks yesterday, and as a part of my final report, one of the suggestions that were given to me was to reflect on what you did right, what you did wrong and what to change. To write out those feelings and learnings to better understand what you did and how to improve. Now, of course, I was not going to write about everything I did. Still, I am going to write about something that I was actively working to incorporate into my lessons and the way I engaged with students: Popular Culture or more specifically, video games.
During the “pre-placement” theory work I was asked what would be some of my goals that I would aim for in my placement and one of them was to drive engagement with my students by using video games and other popular media. Not only would the student be more engaged with the material, but if done correctly, they wouldn’t even know they were learning. So today I am going to go through the things I did to put video games in the classroom: my successes, my failures and generally let you know what games 11 to 12-year olds are playing in 2020.
In the Classroom:
Nothing more recognisable than Steve
Literally, my very first lesson in front of 59 students (it was a combined two classes with two teachers) was using the grid system to draw pixel art. Students were given sheets of grids with instructions on it such as “Brown C3” or “Purple G2 – G5” and they would colour in the squares to form pixel art of an object, person or character. My first challenge was finding characters that would be recognisable for everyone. At this point, I was on my third day in, so I did know the students a little bit, but I did not know the overall class and their tastes. So, I picked the most famous and easily recognisable characters I could: Minecraft Steve, Santa, Olaf, Mickey Mouse and some generic imagery like rainbows, jack-o-lanterns and fairies. The kids got it instantly and loved it. To maintain interest in the activity, I hid what the characters were, so they had no idea who or what they were drawing and watching them slowly realise what they had was fantastic. Due to starting in the middle of the term and a pandemic, I had no interactions with parents except those who worked at the school. The one parent interaction I had was the mother of a student gushing about how her daughter had so much fun making those pixel arts. That was a high point early on and made me feel like I might be good at something (for once).
The second “video game themed” lesson was mapping. The students had been working on grids, cartesian planes and maps. The other classes were using maps based on the local area, and it was getting a bit boring, so I decided to do a lesson about reading maps but using fictional maps. The maps I choose were Neverland from Peter Pan, Dreamworld which is an Australian theme park, Skyrim from the Elder Scrolls and the map from the latest season of Fortnite. While a decent amount of them were unfamiliar with some of the maps they still attacked this lesson and shredded through everything I gave them. As soon as I showed the Fortnite map half the classes face lit up like a Christmas tree, they were so excited to do mathematics that they didn’t’ even realise they were doing mathematics.
The rest of my lessons involved video games on the side. When we did a class of ‘outcast’ characters in fiction, I used some video game characters as examples such as Link from The Legend of Zelda. I used Drawful 2 to help students summarise the last few weeks of lessons (until we crashed the school’s internet, oops), walked through Egypt using Assassin’s Creed: Origins, wrote letters using Kind Words as a template and even brought in my Oculus Quest to transport some lucky students to other countries using Wander. Sometimes I just tried to add as many references as I could like when doing percentages figuring out the chances of someone being the traitor in Among Us. I did all of this to increase engagement. I believe it was very successful, and so did my mentor teachers. There are things I need to iron out and change depending on the age group, but in terms of incorporating that stuff into the classroom, I believe it is an excellent way to connect to students.
In the Playground:
I knew I was going to be in trouble when a few days into my placement, one of the students from a younger grade asked me if I was a gamer. Dang, they somehow found out! Well after being outed as a “Gamer” it was hard to talk to students about anything other than games. But an unintended consequence was I now know what games the youth of today are playing (or at least the Australian Catholic youth between 8 to 12).
Shocking I know
To the surprise of absolutely nobody, the biggest game of elementary school students in October and November of 2020 is Among Us. Everyone in my class was playing it and knew all sorts of stuff about it: Development history, YouTubers who played, technical stuff and beyond. It was so big that I would be asked if I played it CONSTANTLY. This blog title is no joke. Most days I would be asked 2 to 3 times a day if I played and the answer to that, unfortunately, is no. I have never played Among Us even once, and the closest I’ve gotten is playing the hacked together custom game mode version for Overwatch. I used to run a Garry’s Mod server and got plenty of deceptive killing and accusations playing Trouble in Terrorist Town for years, so Among Us was not my cup of tea. Still, nothing even came close to the popularity of it.
One game, however, did surprise me with how popular it was and that’s Rocket League. I don’t know if it was because it went free-to-play recently or what, but tons of kids are still talking and playing it. I played Rocket League when it was first released and super-enjoyed it for what it was but fell out it after a few months and like most of you assumed it just was the hardcore fans remaining. Not the case in my class. Plenty of kids were talking about favourite maps, shots they made and what their car looks like. Honestly, I was shocked they even knew what Rocket League even was, let alone playing it.
I don't even know what Fortnite is anymore
Now Fortnite is interesting because while it is still prevalent in the culture of youth today, the game itself was not. Lots and lots of kids were doing Fortnite dances out in the playground and sometimes even in class. They talk about events coming up or Twitch streamers they watched, but no one was talking about playing the game. I honestly thought I would be confiscating phones and computers from kids playing Fortnite in classes, but I did not have to do it once. The culture surrounding Fortnite was more popular than Fortnite itself was which I found fascinating. I don’t know if it’s because Among Us stole its thunder or the Apple/Epic lawsuits or that catholic kids were not given permission to play it, but it was clear as day: Fortnite is starting to slip.
Just a few quick things that don’t need full paragraphs:
Fall Guys was mentioned a few times but not enough that I was asked if I played it or not. I thought that game was more popular than it is.
A few kids mentioned they played GTA Online and Rainbow Six Siege. I wanted to tell them that those games were wildly inappropriate for 12-year olds if it weren’t for the fact that when I was 12, I was playing GTA Vice City and Rainbow Six 3 on Xbox… so yeah didn’t do that.
Elementary school kids do not care about the Xbox Series X and Playstation 5 at all. I was teaching a class of 59 students, and not one of them said they are getting or wanted to get either one. Everyone was either Switch or Mobile with a couple of PC gamers here and there. Consoles are dead to these kids.
In terms of movies and television, it is what you expect: Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, Netflix and everything popular. Kids love those superheroes. Although a few of them said they didn’t like Into the Spiderverse, and I just shook my head in disgust.
Most of the girls LOVE Hamilton. Half of them could sing the whole thing start to finish. When I gave them a task to analyse the lyrics to ‘My Shot’ the screeching I heard could have broken wine glasses.
Kids still love them some Harry Potter, unfortunately.
Anime is getting big. My Hero Academia is the biggest one, and while as a teacher I had to confiscate it I was so proud of the student who brought a manga volume of Attack on Titan and Death Note to school.
Music is all over the place. Some kids love BTS; some kids love Kayne; some kids love YouTube rap parodies. The only thing they all seemed to love universally is Disney songs and Queen.
Been a while since I've written a blog. Looking back at what I've previously written I can see have juvenile and bitter I was. Now I'm just bitter...
Anyway I wanted to kill some time after work and have an outlet to express myself in a positive way about things I like instead of things I don't. So here is my 5 games I have the most anticipation for in the year 2015.
Frenzy is the word I would describe Hotline Miami. Just a flow on uncontrollable energy with everything keeping that high going. It actually reminds me on a headache in a good way. The visuals are bright, the music is bassy, the violence is brutal. It's a rush. Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number is going to channel that energy into a much more structurally sound game with multiple protagonists (antagonists?) as well as a level editor to make sure you are smashing heads with lead pipes for months.
Finally the unhindered Zelda game we have all been waiting for since Windwaker. No gimmicky motion controls. No limiting portable hardware. A true console Zelda game. Not only that but it's on an actual high definition console capable of creating gorgeous graphics. Honestly, if you have ever been a Zelda game you must be at least excited for this game. A Zelda game with nothing held back sounds almost too good to be true but thankful it is and hopefully will live up to the hype.
I have no idea what Bloodborne is. It's made by the people who made Dark Souls, directed by the guy who directed Dark Souls on current generation hardware. That enough gets me excited but the most exciting thing about it is knowing nothing. I have no idea what to expect and that excites me the most. I cannot wait to dive straight into... whatever Bloodborne is.
Ground Zeroes was a laser designated strike on the hype center on my brain. It gives you just enough to get you hook and like a drug addict I need more. Everything I've seen from the trailers just makes me giddy. Who are these XOF guys? Why is Ocelot helping Snake? What the fuck is that flaming space whale? These things are the things I need to know.
Publishers, this is how you hype a game. Announce it, tell nothing and show less. Persona 5 was announced in December of 2013. It's been over a full calender year and we have had ONE trailer. I hesitate to even call it trailer because it's shows who might be the protagonist and that's it. As much as I hate this marketing strategy it fucking has me. I NEED to play this game. I will take anything. Screenshots. Plot details. GAMEPLAY. Seriously I feel like a begger but dammit Atlus, you're doing be bad. It's driving me crazy and until I have that game physical in my hands I don't think it will stop.
The main argument I am hearing about changing the Mass Effect 3 ending is ‘Bethesda did it for Fallout 3 and it worked’. Sure it’s trying to fix the problem of ‘It has a shitty ending’ but these are two entirely different situations, mainly the reason why it’s bad and how they fixed it.
*Fallout 3 Spoilers*
In Fallout 3 the main character has to enter a code to a machine which is inside a room that’s heavily radiated. The player has many choices to do this. He can do it himself which results in his death, he can refuse to do it and leaves or he can ask one of his companions to do it, which if the ‘Broken Steel’ DLC is not installed, is refused as well. All three of these endings results in the game ending. The reasons why this is considered a bad ending is because of two things: All three endings leaves it impossible for the player to continue playing the game which the player either has to load an old save or start a new character completely from scratch. The other reason is because the situation the player is in can be fixed without the player dying as three of the player’s companions are not affected by radiation (Fawkes, Charon and Sergeant RL -3). These options of asking the companion to put in the code are available but even though this will cause no harm to anyone and gives Washington DC fresh clean water the companions refuse. Their reason is roughly ‘It’s your destiny’. Of course you can see how this can called a horrible ending but Bethesda listened to outcry and made ‘Broken Steel’, a piece of DLC that allows the player to convince the companions of entering the code as well as a new quest line following the.. fallout of your actions.
*Mass Effect 3 Spoilers*
Now from what I can tell the reason why Mass Effect 3’s ending is considered horrible is because the condition the universe is in after Shepherd’s actions negates the actions from over the last 3 games and how that choice is laid out to the player. Mainly the destruction of the Mass Relays, the crash landing of the Normandy and the child from the beginning being ‘The Soul of the Citadel’ as well as some plot holes. The reason why Fallout 3’s ending was changed successfully was because the actual event of the ending still happened. You still had to fight to Project Purity and put in the code. The actual ending wasn't changed, it was what the player can do that changed, allowing players to continue playing the game after the ending. The change was almost purely mechanical. The reason why Mass Effect 3 cannot change so easily is because the issues people are having are 100% plot and writing. To really change the issue of Mass Effect 3’s ending you would have to completely overhaul the plot. Dialogue would have to be rerecorded, new animations, new graphics, new set pieces, part of the plot will have to be rewritten and parts would just need to be removed completely. This would be both incredibly expensive and time consuming. Current DLC plans would either be on hold or rushed. Pretty much the last third of the game would need to be changed completely. With Broken Steel they changed few things about the ending and added alot more to the game as well as a way to continue your game. Even if all that happens, even if Bioware develops this piece of DLC or revision that ending is still going to be in your mind. You’re not going to forget it so really you’re still going to remember Mass Effect 3 had a bad ending.
You cannot draw comparisons between Fallout 3 and Mass Effect 3 just because they have a similar problem. That similar problem has different causes with different solutions. The same can be said about Halo 2’s ending. This isn’t something that can be fixed with a few pieces of dialogue. Everything goes into account and I don’t think Bioware is going to throw years of development away from an excellent game just because the last 10 minutes of it wasn’t up to the extreme high standards Bioware has had with the series.
Do not let those 10 minutes sour your experience over the 150 hours you had of amazing gaming bliss.
Seeing how I got Facebook at the beginning of the year I’m not exactly deep in the casual Facebook game scene. I’ve seen others playing games like Farmville but I never had an interest in it, so much that I have never tried it. That said I’m also not a big Civilization fan, to be honest the only experience I’ve had with Civ was the coverage on Giant Bomb and Civilization Revolution on iOS.
Even with both of those against it I had an interest in CivWorld. I’ve always wanted a MMO-RTS hybrid with the long persistence of an Age of Empires title (which I hope Age of Empires Online will fill) so when CivWorld was released (launched?) I wanted to check it out.
First of all I must point out in CivWorld is that the start of the game is extremely slow. Like ‘continental shift’ slow. In your first hour with the game you’ll achieve almost nothing. In one hour of playtime (which includes a 6 hour gap in between) I manage to create 3 units. That’s right, 3 units in ONE HOUR. In the time it takes you to have a decent game of Civ 5 you’ll have 3 units in CivWorld. This leaves a MASSIVE barrier of entry to any new players with a casual interest. This is mainly because of the resource gathering and how it’s used. Unlike games of the genre food isn’t a commodity, it’s a level. To create units you don’t spend 300 food and have it taken away, no you have to get up to a certain amount of food and each time you want another unit you have to get up to the next level. For example to get one unit you must get 300 food and then after that you’ll need to get 800 food and it goes on and on and on.
This wouldn’t be a problem if the resource gathering itself wasn’t as slow as the rest of the game. The way resources are gathered isn’t as far-fetched as the unit creation but it’s still extremely slow. The Units you DO have are walking between their house, location of resource (farm, trees, rocks) and a drop off point in your town centre. Problem is that the resource they do gather is usually between 1 -3 and with goals in the hundreds and thousands it’s a process that takes a lot of time. Also in a bizarre choice another way to gather resources is a series of mini-games. These mini-games seems like your typing casual games, puzzles, mazes etc but the thing that will catch you off guard is that ‘moves’ are used when interacting with the puzzle. Moving a puzzle piece, twisting a path, passing through a maze all costs ‘moves’ and these ‘moves’ are limited. This stops people from grinding out resources which begs the question of why give me the option to do mini-games for resources when I can only play when certain conditions are met?
Unfortunately that’s as close as CivWorld get’s to being an actual ‘game’. Unlike past Civ games you have no direct control of your units. All you can do tell them what resource to gather and when you units collect resources using an inefficient path this only makes you wish you were playing Civ 5. That’s the less of CivWorld’s problems when it comes to interaction with the game. I’m currently playing on Firefox 5 with an uncluttered toolbar, even with that the Flash window CivWorld presents itself with is too tall for the default window of Firefox. The only way you can see the game window in its entirety is to go full screen, which personally for me sucks because I like to multitask, between iTunes, other tabs and other programs going from thing to thing in full screen Firefox is incredibly annoying. This wouldn’t be such a deal-breaker if your main controls weren’t on the top and bottom of the window.
My next point is being brought up with my lack knowledge on how other ‘Social-Casual games’ do this but it must be addressed. Micro transactions. In almost every subscreen of the game is an option to buy ‘CivBucks’. What are these ‘CivBucks’ you may ask? It’s basically Microsoft points for CivWorld. You buy CivBucks to buy resources, units and items for your throne room. Now I’m all for micro transactions. If buying your way through game makes part of the audience happy it’s good for both the player and the developer. But unlike Team Fortress 2, CivWorld tries to make sure that you are reminded every time you open a new screen to buy CivBucks to improve your Civilization. It’s really shows the money hungry nature of the casual games market and it's really blatant. Also it has a stupid name. CivBucks? Really?
Again, I’ve played CivWorld for an hour. I haven’t even touched combat or research or interaction with other players but so far from what I see and what I’ve played, CivWorld isn’t lookng so hot.
Seems like this year there are many things with universal hate. Kinect, Nintendo and Duke Nukem Forever to only name a few. I’m not necessarily a person who likes to follow trends. I always give a game a chance to impress me despite what others say. This personality trait has lead me to purchase games like ‘Alone in the Dark’ and ‘Alpha Protocol’ and with this trait I have gone out and bought Duke Nukem Forever.
I loved Duke Nukem 3D, despite being about 6 or 7 when played it back in the 90’s. I have very fond memories of running around the first level shooting Pig Cops and blowing up the screen to get at extra goodies. That plus being fascinated by the trolling zombie that was Duke Nukem Forever’s development pretty much locked in my purchase for the game. Due to lack of funds I couldn’t get it when it came out and announce to the world ‘I own a copy of Duke Nukem Forever’ as I was planning but because of this I got to witness the critical reaction to this game: Overall hatred.
But that wasn’t going to stop me, oh no. My hunger for Duke Nukem was not quenched by Manhattan Project or the port of Duke 3D to XBLA. I had to play the sequel to 3D.
14 years later Duke Nukem’s credits flow pass the screen, a completed game. Collecting my thoughts about it I realised how much fun I had with the game. It was very refreshing playing a shooter that wasn’t a Call of Duty knock-off or another cover based shooter. I enjoyed it more than I should have, but why?
One reason I believe is a game that Duke Nukem Forever constantly reminded me of and constantly made comparisons to: Half Life 2. If you think about it Forever and Half Life 2 shares a lot of concepts and ideas. First person platforming, unique weapons, heavy use of first person storytelling, physics puzzles and linear progression, even its flow breaking load times. Duke Nukem and Half Life are completely different kinds of shooters. Duke Nukem being the hardcore adult shooter and Half Life being a strategic atmospheric shooter but I found the way Duke compared to Half Life 2 completely unexpected and hey at one point in the development it used the Half Life 1 engine!
Another reason I believe I like Forever is variety in the genre. As someone who has played almost every Call of Duty from this generation (exception being World at War) as well as its clones it’s refreshing to play just a shooter. No iron sights, no gun customisation, no serious storyline, it’s just ‘Pig Cops, Shotgun, Go’. The world needs more Duke Nukem, Serious Sam and Painkiller games. The genre is getting over saturated and stale and it’s going to die from it. As much as I am looking forward to Modern Warfare 3 I’m looking for to the continuing story of Price and Soap as well as the crazy scenarios Infinity Ward will put us in, not playing it.
I do really like Duke Nukem Forever but I can clearly see its problems and why people hate it. Load times are unacceptable. Load times shouldn’t be this long for a game that doesn’t look great. Load times shouldn’t happen as frequently as it does in Duke Nukem Forever. Most of the time the area in which the loading starts is also the same area the game loads back into so there is no excuse on why this game didn’t stream its loading as you went through the level. I didn’t mind going through the long empty hallways in Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland so why not have it here?
Framerate can get choppy, the game looks decent for a game that came out in 2006, had a boss that didn’t go through its death animation so I got stuck and I had the game crash at one point. But despite all of this I still found the game enjoyable. I’m not going to write a review on this game because that would require me to play the multiplayer and I don’t want to look a dead rotting horse in the mouth but if I could make one statement about the game it is that it is not for everyone.
This is pretty much every game enthusiast worst nightmare.
You have gotten your brand new slim Xbox. You want to get your profile off your old console onto your new console. You put the profile on your USB stick and delete the profile off your old one and place it on to your new profile. Your ready to play some Borderlands. Load it up and your character is missing. That's odd. You load up Halo: Reach and that Hollywood Holocaust remake you spent 3 hours on as well as the rest of your maps, films and other stuff gone. Your 200 hour plus Oblivion save is gone. Nothing is on this console so you check your old console and what do you know, it's not on there either.
Fuck.
So each and every one of my game saves the for 150+ games I played is now gone. Looking back at what I did I did I must of use the option 'Delete profile and items' which includes games saves and other junk. So really I am only angry at myself for being such an idiot and now I must try rebuilding back my saves.
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