Hi! I'm Joemotycki. I'm 27, I live in Canada and I played a lot of good video games this year, both from this year and previous years. In total I played 77 games, 26 from this year. Below are my 10 favourite games that came out in 2017. I already have a big backlog of big games like Assassins Creed: Origins, Night in the Woods and Metroid: Samus Returns which I'm excited to get into in 2018.

10. Persona 5

Boy, my thoughts on Persona 5 are complicated. As a gigantic persona fan, I was incredibly excited by what I saw early on. That game gets off to just an incredibly great start with both its setup and its amazing style. I love how Persona 5 treats the main character in the beginning of the game. Most persona games have them treat you like a complete blank slate and some amazing leader even though you barely say anything but this game is a stark contrast to that by starting you out with everyone disliking you over basically nothing and I definitely feel like its way more exciting. The whole setup for the phantom thieves and how they come to be is also really great. The entire first third of Persona 5 is really well done and lays a great foundation for what I thought was going to be an excellent game.

But after that very promising opening, Persona 5 just fails to maintain its momentum. After the first few dungeons that game kind of lost me. First and foremost, I just don't think the characters live up to the high standards of the previous games. The over-familiarity of characters like Akechi and Morgana are very emblematic of the game as a whole - It just feels too similar to 3 and 4. I really wanted this game to be more ambitious and be a huge departure from the last two games in the series. But so much of the game feels way too safe and when you combine that with some very disappointing story arcs and dungeons in the final half of the game, it puts a huge damper of my strong initial impressions of it. From pre-release up until the middle of the game I really thought this game was going to be number one on this list. The fact that this game barely made it on here at all shows just how disappointed I was with it as a whole. But hey, even if its not a great persona game, its still a pretty good game in its own right, and that's enough to make it on this list.

I just want to forget all about the bad parts of Persona 5 and listen to that amazing soundtrack all day long. Persona 5's jazzy soundtrack is incredible, and probably my absolute favourite in the series. Shoji Meguro really nailed the sound of this game, it fits perfectly with Persona 5's aesthetic.

9. Destiny 2

The part where I liked Destiny 2 feels like 3 years ago. Much like persona, there was a very distinct point in my time with Destiny where I made a sharp turn on how I feel about it, but well get to that in a bit. Everything about playing the game just feels good - the guns feel right, the game looks nice and the enemies die in a real satisfying way. I'm definitely happy with the amount of content in that game. There were enough story missions and extra stuff like public quests, adventures and the raid really give you a lot of things to do in the game. The nightfall strikes were really cool, coordinating those runs in the first week was really satisfying. And the raid was a pretty great time running it with friends, even if those encounters aren't perfect.

My problems with Destiny are more about just the way that game is structured in general. I've been thinking about this a lot, and I just feel like I don't like the loot in that game. The way the loot grind works in that game just doesn't appeal to me. Having every piece of loot in that game be handcrafted instead of randomly generated just leads to a lack of diversity in the end game loot. Instead of having a bounty of different guns to choose from, you kind of need to use one of a dozen or so guns that are "the good ones" and that style of design just doesn't click with me. Despite a lot of content, you just run through it too quickly and after you're done with it, there just isn't that much to go back to. Once I fell off the game, I just stopped playing it entirely. At this point the entire Destiny franchise feels like its never going to completely click with me, but we're at a point where I will still play those games when they come out because they do juuuuust enough to hold my attention. Destiny is real weird... good thing we only have 6 more years to talk about it!

8. Resident Evil 7: Biohazard

Hey! We finally get to have some actual positivity on this list! Resident Evil 7 hooks you in real fast with its creepy portrayal of the Baker family, the game's main antagonists. They're a real messed up family and I wanted to kill each and every one of them from the very first moment I saw them. The video tapes are such a smart addition to the game - They're scary and do such an effective job in portraying the members of the Baker family as complete psychopaths. Its not just the story that works well, the action really brings Resident Evil back to a good place with where they went with this one. Going first person seems like really a smart choice and gels really well with both the action and the horror of the game. Having a member of the Bakers get all up in your face and show you how really terrifying they are is great. The game is filled with so many tense moments and limiting your awareness really helps with that tension. The shooting feels really good and the sparseness of bullets really requires you to take your shots carefully. While the middle section with all the insect nests wasn't my favourite, the rest of that game does a great job of bringing that series back into relevance after the complete trash fire that was RE6.

7. Puyo Puyo Tetris

The short form version of this entry is basically just "Its Puyo. Its Tetris. They're both good".... But what if you combined them? Well, then you would really have something special. The two new modes worth mentioning are "Swap" and "Fusion". Swap is just having one Puyo board and one Tetris board and switching between them at set intervals - Its cool trying to make your brain quickly switch between two distinct styles of play. But where this game really gets crazy is the fusion mode... which is both of them AT ONCE. It's incredibly insane and mind-boggling to wrap your head around. And I love it. I played a ton of it and I feel like I still don't understand it. Nothing about Puyo Puyo Tetris is great on its own, its just that it all comes together in an amazing way.

6. Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus

Wow. They really went for it, huh? Wolfenstein: The New Order was a game that had heart. It had a really nice blend of action, violence and genuinely affecting moments that came together to create a pretty great game. The New Colossus takes everything from that first game and multiplies it by three. Everything that happens in that game is just so damn insane and in the best way, too. The action hasn't changed much and is still fine, but the roller coaster ride of moments had me super invested in the game from the get go. I love both these games portrayals of BJ as an actual character, not just some vessel to shoot dudes. I love his supporting cast, both the new characters and the returning ones. Sigrun Engel specifically gets a shoutout here for having a particularly interesting storyline over the course of the game. And oh boy do I love the twists and turns that the game takes. Wolfenstein II is both shocking, surprising, heart-felt, sad and triumphant and they also flip between these emotions in a way that doesn't feel disjointed or out of place. Every story beat in that game feels earned and serves to push the story forward in a way you probably weren't expecting. I cannot wait to see what they do with that third game!

5. Horizon: Zero Dawn

The thing about Horizon that stands out the most for me is the combat. There's just so many different tools at your disposal and despite the fact that most of them are bows, they all unique and fun to use. I really liked the designs of the enemies in the game and tearing the parts off them is really satisfying. I also love using different elemental abilities and inflicting status effects in order to do extra damage. The crafting and inventory can be a bit much at times but I really just wanted to keep exploring the world to see new enemies, explore new caves and gain new and exciting abilities. I really love the world they create, it is such an incredible technical marvel to look at. And The story within that world is exciting too, including the excellent late game reveal. Sure the actual content within the open world can be pretty bland sometimes, but that doesn't stop Horizon for being a pretty great experience.

4. Cuphead

I'm not sure if you guys know this, but Cuphead looks good. REAL good. I mean... look at it.

No, seriously, LOOK AT IT.

But its not just its looks that makes Cuphead succeed, it also has great gameplay to back it up. It has a very mega man style to it that I absolutely love. Cuphead is a game that isn't afraid to be difficult, but that just serves to show you just how much care was put into the boss fights. Every single one of those fights feels like its own thing, both in its aesthetics and its gameplay, and I loved almost all of the boss fights in the game. They do a really good job of testing your dexterity in different ways, while also encouraging you to test out different playstyles and weapons. By the time you get to the third isle, you already have a good grasp on the controls, and that's when they really ratchet up the difficulty, in a way I could super get behind. Each and every one of those fights looks great, is super challenging and tests what you've learned up until that point. They aren't afraid to throw a lot of stuff at you at once, and it leads to an absolute triumph when you do figure out the patterns and everything comes together for that one perfect run.

But boy, even with this game playing as well as it does, the look of the games carries it so incredibly far. There's absolutely a cohesion to the way Cuphead looks that I can really appreciate. There isn't a single thing in Cuphead that I think looks out of place. Every single background, enemy, obstacle, projectile and boss looks like it was well thought out and specifically placed there. Not only that, but it all just looks amazing as well. There were so many times where I had to stop and look at what was happening and how a small team could put this all together. Its real an incredible achievement that needs to get a lot of recognition and I'm so glad that its sold well and received critical acclaim. Its a great game and deserves all the accolades it has gotten.

3. Super Mario Odyssey

Super Mario Odyssey might have the distinction of having the best E3 trailer I've ever seen in my life. From the reveal that the game centered around throwing your hat at enemies and possessing them, I knew odyssey was going to be a game I would really enjoy. And I know its really weird, but I found the "lore" of Odyssey to be extremely charming. From the inclusion of Pauline, to Cappy and his fellow bonneters, to the storyline of Bowser attempting to marry Peach (especially the end!), all of that stuff is just so enthralling and charming and its pretty crazy to realize that this is all in a Mario game, a series that generally doesn't like to go to heavy in the story department. Ambition is really the main thing I want to talk about with Odyssey, because not only were they super ambitious in the way they told their story, Super Mario Odyssey is probably the first Mario game to give you more open worlds to explore. Sure, some of the areas in previous games allowed you to explore them, but they always had one particular end goal in mind. With this game, however, you're completely free to explore the Kingdoms in whatever way you want, whether it be by mainlining the story or exploring off the beaten path looking for moons.

And the exploration is really the key aspect of odyssey. A lot of the moons in that game are incredibly well hidden and you really need to use all of the tools at your disposal in order to find them. The ability to possess enemies plays an important role in all this, in the sense of doing that is the key to reaching inaccessible areas and solving puzzles. Nearly all the enemies you can possess in this game are great, either from a nostalgia, gameplay or just plain ridiculous perspective. There are many side challenges in Odyssey that really fleshes out the gameplay, it isn't all just exploring the world. A great addition to these side areas is the fact that every single one of them contains two moons instead of one. Knowing that every single time you go into a door, there will be one hidden moon you have to find really heightens the enjoyment of going through those areas, making it so that you are always on the look out for hidden stuff, which is kind of the theme for that game. My one complaint with the game is that just a few too many of the moons in odyssey feel like tacked on easy moons that didn't need to be there. Ground pounding the apex of a random hill and receiving a moon isn't satisfying and the world could've been designed a little tighter without those superfluous moons. But even with a decent amount of unnecessary moons the numerous kingdoms in Mario Odyssey were packed with more that enough interesting stuff to keep me hooked throughout.

2. PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS

When I first bought PUBG I definitely thought "I'm going to play this for 30 hours, not like it and will have felt like I wasted 35 Canadian dollars". Now, having spent nearly 400 hours with the game I can definitely say I was wrong about my initial impressions about it. Playerunknown's battlegrounds just gets better and better the more you play it. Learning the ropes of how the guns handle, how the circle mechanics work and getting your general strategies down is an ever-evolving process. At the beginning it can be a little daunting, but once you get a handle on the game is when you really start to find a groove and develop your own strategies on how to play it. The fact that every player has their own strategy really speaks to the diversity of battlegrounds, there isn't just one 'correct' way to play it. This leads to the idea that absolutely anything can happen when playing a game of battlegrounds. Around any corner, in any house, behind any tree there theoretically could be another player, which leads to the end of the game being an insanely tense game of cat and mouse. When you get down to the final 15 or so, every shot is terrifying, every time you see another player its terrifying, and every time you kill someone it feels amazing. Emerging from the pile of 100 people as the victor feels like an immense triumph, but its not just the victories that feel special. There were so many amazing moments that happened to me, both in solo, duo and squad matches, that felt like they couldn't happen in any other multiplayer shooter but this one. Dying in spectacular ways, narrowly escaping certain death and question team decisions always make for great stories to tell your friends.

Its so surprising how what looked like an uninspiring take on battle royale proved to take the entire gaming nation by storm. Everyone I knew was talking about it, and over the course of the year I had about 5 different battlegrounds groups going, each one with its own unique style of play (some certainly better than others). I really love the way the game handles death. I played a lot of Search and Destroy in Call of Duty back in the day so "one life and you're done" game modes have always been my style. But instead of having to sit out for the rest of the round, you just go back to the menu when you die. Most of the times that happens I jump right back in, ready to see what insane tragedies or narrow victories will happen. Many shooters have come and gone, but the thing about PUBG that sticks out in my mind is the feeling I get while I'm playing it. No other shooter has capture this kind of tension, this kind of exhilaration in a multiplayer match. While it sometimes takes a ton of looting to get to the good part, when it does pop off I know it will be extremely exciting no matter the outcome. And its that level of excitement that makes battlegrounds an incredible experience, and the second best game I played all year.

1. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

I've never been a huge Zelda fan, but Breath of the Wild is a super interesting departure from the typical Zelda formula. Breath of the Wild is Nintendo's answer to the open world game and boy did they get it right! There are so many great things that stand out in particular: I love the way the game doesn't necessarily direct you toward the points of interest in the way you expect. Instead of putting an icon on your map saying "Hey, go to this icon and see this interesting stuff" it allows you to look at it from a distance and say "Hey, that stuff over there looks interesting, lets go check it out!" In the end, that particular method of exploration ends up being way more satisfying than your typical open world game. It leads to you not knowing what you're going to find when you're exploring instead of telling you where things are and what they are. That constant sense of wonder during exploration never really went away for me, as I was constantly find new, exciting stuff all over Zelda's world. This game is filled will subtle nuances that are tough to pick up on at first, but make complete sense once you think about it. Its incredibly cool how a lot of the mechanics in Zelda use human logic instead of video game logic. Everything acts and reacts like you would expect it to, and you can continually use that to your advantage in ways you didn't initially think was possible. I love how, in general, the difficulty of a particular area is tied to how hard climbing that areas tower is. Areas with very little resistance near its tower tend to be easier in general. This is a stark contrast to areas where there are guardians near the tower or where the tower itself is hard to climb. In those areas you would then know that there is going to be a lot of tougher enemies, difficulty shrines and more resource intensive parts of that area. Its such a subtle thing, but once I figured out that was the case it was so interesting and served as a good guide for how I should progress through the game. Those are just two examples but I feel like I could go on for much longer with how much stuff is in this game.

The thing I like the most about Breath of the Wild is just how great the world is. By now, you had to have heard stories about stuff like Eventide Island. That sort of thing just shows how you need to be ready for literally anything while playing Zelda, you never know when youre going to be up against a huge challenge or a very intimidating boss. I also really like a lot of the iconography in the game. The whole Blue = Completed, Orange = incomplete motif of the game really helps you out when you're looking to find new things in an area you've already explored. I love the "pads" peppered throughout the game, how they each have different ways of activating them and how figuring that stuff out is usually very exciting and fun. All of these things I've mentioned plus a lot more is what makes Zelda more than just a game for me. Breath of the Wild is a transcendental experience, which isn't a word I use lightly. This is a game that expands my definition of what games can be, that sometimes distilling games right down to their very essence is exactly what you need to do to make a game special. Breath of Wild is a game I couldn't even conceive of until it was out and I was playing it.The very small missteps of the game, like the bad dungeons and uninspired combat do very little to detract from the wholly unique experience that is The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Its a game I cannot wait to go back to eventually and also a game I will be thinking about for many years to come.

Hi! I'm Joemotycki. I'm 26, I live in Canada and I played a lot of good video games this year, both from this year and previous years. In total I played 41 games, 24 from this year. Below are my 10 favourite games that came out in 2016. I already have a big backlog of big games like Inside, Dark souls III and Burnout Paradise which I'm excited to get into in 2017.

10. Darkest Dungeon

Turn based strategy holds a special place in my heart (as you will see it well represented on this list) and Darkest Dungeon brings a bunch of cool mechanics to the genre. Having a stress meter in addition to your health is a neat idea that adds an extra layer to the already difficult decisions you have to make in the game. Do you heal up, make the battle take longer and increase the likelihood of your party becoming stressed or do you go all out and risk your characters dying outright? Risk versus reward is always something i want at the forefront of my strategy and Darkest Dungeon gets it right. There are so many tradeoffs to the game that you really need to have a good balance of characters and abilities in your party or else you wont be able to get past the tougher encounters. The game also handles is difficulty very well in the sense that every decision you make is extremely important, but one wrong decision will rarely doom you. Although I did feel like the game was a bit of grind with a sort of thin structure outside the dungeons, it was the turn based combat that kept me coming back to the game over and over for more than 50 hours. It has a level of tension that very few games get right and its for that reason that it takes the number 10 spot on my list.

9. Paragon

I won't bore you too much with MOBA talk, but i will say I'm always willing to play mobas that that present new ideas and aren't just the same as all the others. While paragon is CERTAINLY a moba, the behind the back perspective and card system (which replaces the item systems of other mobas) are interesting changes that make it fun to to play. The map they created looks amazing and the characters are pretty interesting. Since it isn't isometric, actual aiming is an important part of paragon and not only does it add an extra layer of complexity to the game, it also makes flanking and surprising enemies more of a factor. I haven't played the new and improved map yet but I may just jump in with friends in the new year and check out the changes they've recently made.

8. Xcom 2

Xcom 2 is a game that I'm kind of struggling with how I feel about it. On the one hand, its very similar to Enemy Unknown and hits similar highs that the previous game did. It definitely feels like Xcom, with all the thrilling missions, narrow escapes and frustrating shot misses that come along with it. Every time you see a new enemy its incredibly terrifying, and they always have some ridiculous power that manages to annihilate at least one person on your team(until you save scum, that is). The new geoscape is littered with things for you to do, but you have to manage your time carefully because its impossible to get to all the things on the map. Seeing your squadmates level up and giving them powerful new abilities is satisfying and once again, the ability tradeoffs they give you are often pretty tough to decide which way you want to spec out your squad. Time and resource management is just as fulfilling as it was in the last game, and the feeling of getting more powerful only to have some new ridiculous thing come along to crush your spirits is disheartening, but in a way that's kind of cool.

Xcom 2 is fun and all, but its the bad things about it that really put a damper on my feelings toward it. Even though it kept its great turned-based gameplay intact, it just felt like there was a little something missing. First of all, the game was still a technical mess. They did fix a lot of the absolutely game-breaking bugs that Enemy Unknown had and fixed a lot of other issues over time, but it still had numerous issues at launch, ranging from minor inconveniences to just standing there having the game not respond or hard crashes to desktop. The times where you're just sitting around waiting for the game to give you control again are way too frequent, and you just never know when the game is just going to fall apart or break in a way that screws you over. But still through all of that, I managed to beat the game twice, once on normal and once on commander/ironman, which was pretty exciting. Overall, Xcom 2 is similar to Xcom: Enemy Unknown in a lot of ways, but not all of them good. I would've liked to see a sequel that was a little more ambitious than this game is, but I'm moderately happy with how this game turned out in the end.

7. Forza Horizon 3

I tend to fall on the more arcadey side of the racing genre. Even though games like Burnout Paradise are more my speed thing, I do really like how the Forza Horizon series kind of straddles the line between arcade and simulation. Having not played a Horizon game since the first one, it was refreshing to remember just how great these games are. The third entry in the series is the best yet, using Australia as a backdrop for fun races, interesting challenges, and a gorgeous open world. I really enjoyed driving around doing drifts, smashing through XP boards and performing hot skill chains during skill songs. The races are plentiful and fun to partake in and I loved amassing a huge collection of cars, each with its own special feel to it. I spend a lot of time driving through Australia, doing basically everything there was to do and despite a few hiccups on PC, really enjoyed my time with it.

6. Hitman

I'm not a huge fan of stealth games, but in its own weird way, Hitman isn't as much of a stealth game as you would think. I like to view it more as a vessel of making ridiculous things happen through its stealth mechanics. Getting caught isn't the end of the world and often times it can lead to great escapes are frantic kills that leave a great lasting memory. I love the challenges and opportunities in Hitman. They're a great way to nudge you in the direction of making fun things happen, while still giving you the joy of discovering them for yourself. They fully load the maps with so many fun ways to kill your target and finding them and executing on them is always a blast. You always have so many tools at your disposal that there are just so many different ways to go about killing your targets. It doesn't always go exactly as planned but even that gives rise to amazing unexpected moments of quick thinking and emergent brilliance.

The episodic nature of Hitman makes so much sense that i cant believe they didn't do it sooner. It really made me to want to go back and play the maps over and over and see everything that the maps had to offer. Encouraging playing a map again through mastery unlocks also helps ensure you will be better equipped for future missions by unlocking even more cool tools to test out. Its super cool how Hitman almost came out of nowhere to become the game that had people coming back to it over the course of the whole year. It gets almost everything right, and provides them with a ton of momentum heading into season 2. I cannot wait to see what kinds of locations, weapons, and targets they'll come up with next.

5. Doom

I don't have the nostalgia for DOOM that a lot of people do. But even though I didn't play those games growing up, it didn't stop me from really enjoying my time with the new Doom. For me, doom strikes a good balance between old and new, keeping the spirit of the old games while still feeling modern. It evokes the spirit of the old games with its fast pace, dodging projectiles and colored keycards while actually being a really fun game to play. The combat arenas in that game are specifically designed for you move around in, and each combat encounter feels unique and satisfying. There's no one way to approach each encounter and all of them are thrilling in their own way.

I absolutely love the weapons in doom. They give you so many options, and with each weapon having two different useful alternate fires, there's just a ton to play around with. From pure power weapons like the super shotgun and gauss cannon to weapons that require more finesse like the combat rifle they cover a wide range of uses. And in order to succeed, you need to be able to know how to use almost all of them due to ammo and enemy strength considerations. All the weapons feel good in their own way and tearing demons apart and then running up to them and glory killing them is super satisfying. Doom is also filled with smart upgrades systems nearly across the board. Runes to provide general upgrades, weapon upgrades that make you feel like even more of a badass and suit upgrades that increase health/armor/ammo are all welcome additions to doom and choosing which part of your arsenal to upgrade first is both fun and an interesting thing to talk about. Last but not least the sound and music in doom are all top notch. I want this game to be higher on my list but its not this low because it gets anything wrong, its just that the rest of these games are so, so good. If you haven't played doom yet, I highly recommend it. Its a ton of fun.

4. Picross 3D Round 2

Picross 3D Round 2 makes me happy.

To a regular person, that might seem like a pretty ordinary statement, but for me, it means a hell of a lot. Picross 3D-2 is better than your typical handheld or mobile game - its more than something like puzzle and dragons, or sudoku, or Pac-man 256. Its not just a game to play when i have to kill time or when i have a commute. Picross 3D Round 2 is a game that stands on its own as a great game. The gameplay is extremely simple - you have a big block and you're breaking blocks of it and painting the rest to form a shape or item of some sort. The big change from the first game is that now you're painting the shape two different colours, and its a huge difference that both expands the challenge of the game as well as changes the way you have to approach solving each puzzle. You have to be careful when breaking or painting blocks, but the thing I love about the game is the fact that there is absolutely no guessing required in Picross 3D Round 2. There is always a block to be painted or broken and sussing out where those blocks are is part of the fun of the game. The puzzles strike a good balance between being relaxing but actually requiring effort to complete. I felt like it was a good palate cleanser after playing a really demanding game like Doom or Overwatch.

So yeah, my love is Picross 3D Round 2 is kinda irrational and I can't quite put my finger on why exactly I love this game as much as i do, but the fact is I put 65 hours into it, loved every second of it, and would've gladly put 50 hours more into it if it was there. That gameplay loop is what kept me coming back to the game over and over. At no point in my time with the game did I ever get bored with it, even as simple as the gameplay is. They do a great job with its presentation and look, as well as making you feel happy with the sounds it makes after you complete a puzzle. And damn, what a pleasant soundtrack! I listened to it a lot, it fits the game perfectly, and its basically impossible to be sad while listening to, its so good.

3. The Witness

I never know if I'm going to like Jonathon Blow's games before I play them. They always seem like they're right on the edge of being too caught up in themselves to actually be good. But in the case of Braid and The Witness, once i actually pick them up and start playing them I understand that those games appeal to my sensibilities, even if I don't see eye to eye with Jon Blow's way of philosophizing. None of that stuff really matters though, seeing as The Witness is, simply put, a fantastic puzzle game. I love games that take a simple mechanic like drawing lines and expand it out into a full fledged experience and that's exactly what The Witness does. I certainly don't love every area in the game but I do like how each area has its own unique feel to it, both in an aesthetic sense and also with its own specific puzzles in that style to solve.

The puzzles are the biggest part of The Witness and they strike a good balance between puzzles whose solution only requires you to look at the information presented on the panels and puzzles whose solution requires you to take in information from the external environment. Figuring out what is going on with those external environment puzzles is often super satisfying. There are a bunch of areas that really put your intellect to the test, from the ability to scour the environment to solve a puzzle to paying attention to subtle audio or visual clues, to your sense of spacial awareness. Its extremely cool how they cover a wide variety of puzzles types while still keeping the gameplay simple. And its not just the puzzle panels that make The Witness great. I won't spoil it specifically but there's much more to figure out in The Witness, and any game that can draw comparisons to Fez in the way that it subtly hides information in the world is totally alright in my book. The Witness is one of the best puzzle games in years, you should play it.

2. Overwatch

The thing about Overwatch that sets it apart from other shooters is the sheer diversity of all the characters. No two characters feel even remotely similar and everyone has a specific role to play in their team. Each hero has his or her own unique set of abilities that are fun to use and a specific playstyle that has its own feel to it. Flying through the air shooting rockets as Pharah feels completely different from swinging a big-ass hammer as Reinhardt. You can really tell how much thought they put into making each character feel good. I really don't feel like there is any character who feels out of place or doesn't have a role in one way or another. I loved talked to different people and seeing which character was their personal favourite and why they felt that way. It really speaks to the quality of the game that everyone has a different favourite and also different reasons for it being their favourite.

Not only do the individual characters feel great, but the way the characters abilities interact with each other is super interesting. Things like team composition, hard counters and overall team balance are very important in Overwatch. I really like how different ultimates work well in tandem with each other and even though the characters all feel vastly different, the entire roster manages to achieve a nice sense of balance. Briefly before i touched on talking to other people about the game and I want to go back to that idea because I also feels like this game appeals to a wider audience that most shooters usually do. Its cool to see people who don't usually get into shooters really falling in love with Overwatch while still appealing to me, a regular shooter fan. Even though there's not really a fleshed out story and the loot boxes are terrible, that didn't stop me from putting a ridiculous amount of hours into Overwatch, and I'm still not even done with the game. In any other year this would've been my favourite game, but there was one other shooter that just barely managed to be more fun than this one.

1. Titanfall 2

The first Titanfall was easily my favourite game of 2014, despite how thin it felt. For me personally, the new things it brought to the genre - the wallrunning, the fluid movement, and the titans - were just enough to keep me coming back to it. I really liked the way Titanfall felt, but I wanted more; a more fleshed out progression system, more guns, more awesome moments and also I wouldn't mind an actual campaign. In the end, Titanfall 2 does exactly what it sets out to do, and that's expanding on the already great foundation that the first game built. They weren't afraid to make some big changes but its all in service of making you feel like an absolute badass. The multiplayer aspect basically gets everything right - Just the way everything feels about that game is fantastic. The developers over at Respawn have talked about actually slowing the game down in spots to better serve the overall game experience. And while it first seemed antithetical to everything that Titanfall was about it actually serves to make the game even better. You always feel like you're in total control and it seems like every multiplayer match has one or two awesome moments that feel special and unique.

Not only does Titanfall 2 have excellent multiplayer, it throws a pretty great campaign in there as well. They didn't go for bombastic story or shock value, they went for good gameplay and memorable moments and boy did they nail it. It just feels like a bunch of cool stuff chained together and you know what? That's exactly what I wanted out of it. It doesn't outstay its welcome or go outside of what Titanfall is supposed to be, it just gives you a nice compact campaign with a bunch of cool moments that play on the strengths of the game. Overall, Titanfall 2 is bigger, better, and more well rounded than the first game was. I'm not sure if there's any game out there that puts a bigger smile on my face than Titanfall 2. Whether I'm wallrunning and gunning down players as a pilot or performing sick executions while in a titan, you can be sure I'm having a ton of fun while doing it. And thats why Titanfall 2 is my favourite game of 2016.

Boy, these things are just coming later and later for me, but hopefully I can get June's blog out at a reasonable time next month. I played 2 games this month and they're both pretty amazing and I didn't even really feel the need to play anything else. No games from previous months to talk about, its basically all been dominated by two shooters that I really can't wait to talk about.

Reviewing the blogs I've done earlier in the year, there's the 11 games I played in January, the 6 games of February and 9 games in March and April (with bonus podcast included!). Go check 'em out if you're curious of what I played earlier this year. This brings my total up 28 games I've played so far this year.

DOOM (2016)

I don't have the nostalgia for DOOM that a lot of people do. But even though I didn't play those games growing up, it didn't stop me from really enjoying my time with the new Doom. For me, doom strikes a good balance between old and new, keeping the spirit of the old games while still feeling modern. It evokes the spirit of the old games with its fast pace, dodging projectiles and colored keycards while actually being a really fun game to play. Doom just feels great, from the movement to the guns to the glory kills, it all fits together so perfectly and its the feel of doom that elevates it to the next level. The combat arenas in that game are specifically designed for you move around in, and each combat encounter feels unique and satisfying. There's no one way to approach each encounter and all the encounters are thrilling in their own way.

I absolutely love the weapons in doom. They give you so many options, and with each weapon having two different useful alternate fires, there's just a ton to play around with. From pure power weapons like the super shotgun and gauss cannon to weapons that require more finesse like the combat rifle they cover a wide range of uses. And in order to succeed, you need to be able to know how to use almost all of them due to ammo and enemy strength considerations. All the weapons feel good in their own way and tearing demons apart and then running up to them and glory killing them is super satisfying. Doom is also filled with smart upgrades systems nearly across the board. Runes to provide general upgrades, weapon upgrades, suit upgrades and pickups increase health/armor/ammo are all welcome additions to doom and choosing which part of your arsenal to upgrade first is both fun and an interesting thing to talk about. Last but not least the sound and music in doom are all top notch. If you haven't played doom yet, I highly recommend it. Its a ton of fun.

Overwatch (2016, PC version)

Hey I'm not sure if you guys know this, but Overwatch is pretty damn good. I had already played a lot of the beta and even now I'm still having a lot of fun with the game. It really surprised me how fun overwatch is to play given that its blizzards first shooter. What sets it apart from the others shooters I've played is that all the different heroes feel so different, and almost all of them are fun to play in their own unique way. Each hero has its own playstyle and you have to be aware what abilities you have at your disposal as well as the enemies abilities. I love flying in the air as Pharah and reigning down rockets on poor defenseless healers. I love shielding my teammates as Reinhardt and then charging in and smashing foes with my giant hammer. Even healing people as mercy can be pretty fun sometimes. Mastering when and where to use your abilities is a crucial part of overwatch and the ultimate abilities feel just powerful enough to turn the tide of a match, while at the same time not feeling too powerful.

The thing I love the most about Overwatch is the dynamic of heroes' strengths and weaknesses. No one hero is unstoppable; every single one has a least one counter that neutralizes that particular hero's strength. Mobility is a key tenant of overwatch but not one that all heroes specialize in. Many heroes like bastion and roadhog have no movement increasing abilities and it takes a long time to get them back into the action once they die. Its a stark contrast to heroes such as Soldier 76 and tracer, who have a much easier time getting back into the fight as well as during actual combat. Tracer is super tough to hit whereas bastion is an incredibly easy target when in siege mode. There's just so many things to consider in overwatch and that depth is something that I've really grown to appreciate over my 100 hours with the game. The lack of modes does bug me a little, but just the amount of pure fun with the game makes that issue matter a little bit less. My love of the first person shooter is unending but make no mistake: overwatch is something special. Overwatch is quite possibly going to be the most fun I'll have with any game this year... We'll just have to see how Titanfall 2 turns out.

So I couldn't find the time(due to laziness) to write a blog in April so this time we have to cover two months of games I've played. I actually only played 9 games in March and April, but because of Rare Replay I guess you could say I played a lot more. In addition, wrapping up games from earlier in the year, I managed to finish Binary Domain. The ending to that game is super crazy and is actually pretty cool, even if the rest of the game isn't particularly exciting. I also managed to finish my Ironman/Commander run of Xcom 2. Took me a couple tries but I finally managed to get lucky enough to make it past the early stages of the game. Lastly, I managed to beat my old high score in Devil Daggers and now sit at 264.4431.

I had a lot of time early in the year so I managed to squeeze in 11 games in January. Next, I also wrote a blog detailing the 6 games I played during the month of February. In the months of March and April I played a total of 9 games. I beat 3 games (with one I still need to go back to), finished most of the games contained within Rare Replay, played 2 sports games and also 3 multiplayer games. This brings my total game count up to 26 games I've played this year so far. Not too shabby If I do say so myself.

Lasty, I recorded what is the 4th episode of a podcast with a friend of mine talking about some games. We talk about the upcoming release of Overwatch, The puzzles of Witness and how they blew my mind, Dark Souls III and its place in the series, as well as a few smaller games that we both enjoyed. Give it a listen if you want. Here's a podcast

Completed

Tom Clancy's The Division (2016)

Oh loot shooters, why are you so weird? The Division is pretty good, but much like Destiny, it doesn't quite hit all the notes that you want it to. The campaign portion of the game contained a lot of things that I liked, those things just didn't occur often enough. The shooting feels good in the Division, but there aren't really a wide variety of weapons. The gear is pretty interesting but you don't really get enough of it. There isn't really a part of The Division that doesn't work, its just that all of its parts don't really come together in a very satisfying way. The bullet sponge nature of the enemies mean that working as a team is the key to getting through the story missions. Going in alone is often a recipe for having to try encounters over and over until everything lines up in your favour. Being able to flank enemies while your teammates have them distracted is the key to most missions and the areas are often open enough to allow that to happen. The side content in the game is very bland, but in a way its pretty necessary because it ties into the upgrades you get back at your home base. I liked the upgrade system in the Division. As you complete the main quests and also side quests you're unlocking new sections of each the 3 wings of the main hub. Each upgrade benefits you in some way and gives you many options in which to spec out your character. The upgrade stuff is well done, which makes the only decent missions a little disappointing.

Definitely the best part of the game for me was the dark zone. The dark zone has separate leveling and separate gear, which means you have to play a lot of it if you want to get the best loot that area has to offer. In order to do that, you're mostly killing NPCs in the dark zone. The hook is that there are also numerous players in there as well, and you never know when they are going to try and take your loot. In order to get the items you've acquired you have to go to a designated point and extract it, which takes time and draws attention to you. If you're by yourself that puts a pretty big target on your back so its a wise idea to travel into the dark zone as a group. The most interesting concept in the dark zone is the mechanic of 'going rogue' - If you shoot at another human player enough, the game marks you as a rogue and puts a bounty on your head for anyone who kills you. It gives you harsher penalties for dying as a rogue and anyone who shoots a rogue will not be marked as such. This creates a really interesting dynamic at extraction points of weighing whether or not its worth it to go rogue or not. You can never see just what loot exactly a person has so killing another human and going rogue is always a risk. You never know who is going to betray you and it makes the whole dark zone feel exciting. I spent a lot of time in there and although I didn't quite get as many items as I wanted, I still had a lot of fun in there. The dark zone makes the whole package of The Division easier to recommend, but you have to be into PvP and accepting of the fact that at any time anyone can turn on you and take your stuff.

The Wolf Among Us (2016)

Thanks to Games with Gold, I finally got a chance to play Telltale's Fables-inspired episodic adventure. Going back to this one was a little rough, seeing as both Tales from the Borderlands and Life is Strange both came out and are probably better games than this one. I still managed to moderately enjoy my time with TWAU though. The grim setting and gritty characters sets a good mood early on and things only get darker as you progress. Its definitely a shame the most of the choices in the game boiled down to either choosing between two people or choosing between a too lenient or too harsh solution. Its kind of a dumb conceit that most adventure games don't let you approach decisions level-headedly. I understand those games are about tough choices but in a difficult situation its never a bad idea to land in the middle rather than choosing something extreme. I did like the characters for the most part. And I sort of accidentally sent Toad to the farm and didn't send Colin. Whoops.

Still Playing

Rare Replay (2015)

With 30 games in one, Rare Replay has taken up a lot of time the past two months. I hadn't played most of the games in this collection so it was nice to play these games for the first time and see what they were about. Even though a couple games weren't present for some reason or another (Why isn't Anticipation for the NES in here??), there were still many games in the collection that occupied my time. Obviously some of the older games were absolutely inscrutable (I'm looking at you, Knight Lore, Underwurlde and Snake Rattle and Roll) but there were some hidden gems that I was surprised how well some of the older games held up. Getting to see cool games like Jetpac, Atic Atac and RC Pro Am for the first time was fun, even if those games weren't really built to last. I wont go into detail for every game in Rare Replay but there were some that are worth getting into. Also with some of the older games you can press LT to rewind a little bit if you make a mistake. Its a nice addition considering the fact that I wouldn't be able to get through some of these games without it.

The main reason I mentioned that rewind feature? I played Battletoads for the first time and boy you sure need it for that game! Its kind of weird talking about the game now because when you have the ability to sidestep a lot of the difficulty of the game, it actually makes a lot more fun to play. I never played Battletoads as a kid and now that I've beaten it, I kinda like it. Even with a lot of rewinding I can totally see how numerous areas would be frustrating (Jumping on the snakes to the goal was super cool, but maybe less so if I had died a million times on it). Some of the one-off mechanics of the game were poorly executed but at the very least I found the game to be interesting. I also had never played Cobra Triangle before and I think that's a cool game. Its a boat game where each level gives you a vastly different objective from racing, to saving people from being taken away by other boats, to destroying a huge dragon. Its awesome and one of the better Rare titles for the NES.

The N64 and Original Xbox era of Rare is something I'm not particularly familiar with so it was very interesting to go and play some of the games that were developed by them in that time period. I never played Banjo-Kazooie back in the day so it was interesting to get a couple hours into that. Thankfully they give you the 360 version with updated controls and it seems like something that young me would've been super way into. Lastly we have the 360 era of Rare, which basically means I played some Viva Pinata. It was pretty cool collecting a bunch of cutely named animals and maintaining a large pool of different pinatas to take care of in my garden. I'm probably never going to play Kameo and I haven't delved into Nuts and Bolts yet but I can definitely see myself going back to the latter once Overwatch is out of my system... In like two months.

Invisible Inc (2015, PS4 version)

Invisible Inc is a game with a bunch of interesting design decisions. Its also kind of a game that I wish I liked a little more than I do. Talking about this game is tough because I really feel like I need to play a little more before I can really talk about how the game's systems interact with each other but I'll do the best I can for the time being. The game is structured to be played multiple times, with each playthrough unlocking more characters and upgrades to start out with. I've only beat the game once on easy so far and the next game I played on the normal difficulty kicked my ass. Its a turn based strategy game that only gives you two characters to start out with, so using your action points effectively and scouring the map and collecting the upgrades you need is extremely important to making out the later levels alive. Its basically a stealth game where you have to infiltrate corporate facilities, extract key items, whether they be extra characters, better weapons, extra upgrades, leads on new facilities and more.

Being effectively stealthy is extremely important. You can't dawdle in the levels or the game's constantly raising alarm will catch up with you. Being too hasty is also a death sentence because if you rush into a room without scouting it out first, eventually you will be spotted. Being stealthy is key because once the enemy has a bead on you, its real easy for them to kill a character and once they do that character is dead for good. You do have a few rewinds at your disposal if you find yourself in an unwinnable situation. Those need to used sparingly though because of how easy it is to find yourself on the edge of death.Its neat how you really feel like a true ninja when you do pull off a successful infiltration and getting through an area unseen is really cool. But the fact that you only start with two characters is a bit of an odd decision for me to wrap my head around. It makes it super difficult to explore the entirety of the map without spreading your characters out and once you do that and you have no way of providing support to those who need support with flanking an enemy or using their special abilities. Its a hard game that hasn't clicked with me yet. I'll give it some more attempts but I'm just not sure if this game is for me.

Multiplayer & Sports Games that Kind of Defy Classification

Duck Game (2015)

In April, Steam had a free weekend of Duck Game going and seeing as I was already interested in the game I figured I would give it a shot. I'm a guy who is super into multiplayer in almost any capacity and Duck Game definitely scratches an itch that I have for multiplayer. The game is along the lines of something like Towerfall or Samurai Gunn where you're in arena trying to kill each other. But it almost has a Smash Bros like component where you're picking up items on the map like guns, swords and various other weapons. In addition, most of the arena aren't walled in so falling/being thrown off the map is a possibility. Some of the weapons in the game are pretty interesting. One of my personal favourites is a sort of web gun you shoot and your opponent to trap them in a net for a few seconds and them pick them up and throw them off the map. Its super satisfying.

Definitely one of the more unique aspects of this game is the fact that all of the maps are hand crafted. You would think with a game like this that either the weapons that spawn or the maps themselves would be randomly generated but that isn't the case. For me personally, I think this works really well because first of all, there are more then enough maps to see so that repeats happen very infrequently. In addition, having static maps allow you to really learn the maps and craft specific strategies for each map. It adds an extra layer to a game that already has a nice amount of depth and nuance to it. Once you learn what the weapons do, its fun playing around with different strategies and going for specific weapons on map with many different options. The look and sound of it gives the game a very sega genesis-type feel to it which suits the game very well. Overall, I had a blast playing it with friends and definitely recommend it if you like that kind of chaotic multiplayer where its great to watch people die in spectacular ways and then gloat to them about it later.

Ultimate Chicken Horse (2016)

Another multiplayer game here that I think is pretty fun. If you want to describe it succinctly, you could say that Ultimate Chicken Horse is basically competitive Mario Maker, where you're all building on one level that you are trying to complete while simultaneously trying to get everyone else to fail. All players place items on the board at once and you pick from a small pool of items every turn, usually a mix between platforms, traps, obstacles and the like. There's a great push and pull between making the levels too easy and incredibly hard. Shortcuts one turn become trap-laden nightmares the next. Using one well placed platform can mean the difference between no one winning and everyone making it through. The levels are constantly changing every turn so you have to always be thinking about new possible routes to make it to the end. The platforming feels good and knowing exactly how the physics work, with hitboxes and double-jumping and what the patterns of the traps are is key to victory. This is also a game I really recommend because its more of a thinking man's game than you might expect.

Typefighters (2016)

Turns out I'm pretty bad at typing. I played this game with a friend a couple times, got annihilated by him and haven't played it since. It was 2 dollars, I dunno.

F1 2015 (2015)

Thanks to one Drew Scanlon, I both watched some Formula 1 races and played an F1 game for the first time. I like the simulation-style driving in F1 2015, where you have to keep things like tire wear and fuel consumption in mind. You really have to be aware of the track so that you are taking your turns smoothly without losing speed or going off the track. While it was really hard at first to not take advantage of the cautious AI and not just dive into the inside and blow by everyone on turn one, eventually I learned how to almost race properly... almost. Learning how to properly use specific areas of the track to overtake or defend your position is key and in a weird way helps you get a unique perspective on actual F1 races. I'm not going to say I think like an F1 driver now, but at least I have a little more insight into how they might think about how they race. Thanks @drewbert for getting me into a sport that I can't even fathom how they do it.

MLB 15 The Show (2015)

Baseball has always been a passion of mine and over the past year or so I've wanted to delve into some recent sports games and see what they're all about. Having already dug into Madden and FIFA, I figured April was the perfect time to finally give the show a go. Thankfully, it wasn't too daunting of a task and while I didn't put a ton of time into it, I did like what I've played. It seemed like it was pretty easy to pick up seeing as the controls weren't too complicated and when I did learn what I was doing I had a decent amount of fun with it, even if I was playing on a easy difficulty where I mostly annihilated the other team. I don't have much to say about the actual video game but hey - baseball is a fun sport, even if it is objectively the most boring of the four major sports.

I figured the new year is a great place to finally start cataloging my thoughts on the games I play each month. Over the course of January I finished 7 games, got through 10 hours of another, and then started 3 more games but put them off to the side to play for later. Thankfully, most of the games I played this month were pretty good! The wide variety of genres I experienced as well as the different years of release from all the games that I played this month really provided a good contrast and helped me put each game into the proper perspective.

Completed

Her Story (2015)

Her story isn't a very believable game, but that didn't stop me from fully enjoying what this game had to offer. It does a good job of giving you small nuggets of information and leaving it up to you to follow the breadcrumb trail to get answers of what's really going on. The moment of stumbling into a fascinating entry from searching a seemingly innocuous term is super intriguing and finally reaching the moment where you put all the pieces together makes you feel like you're a real detective. Her story is filled with entries that make you say "Huh?" and they entice you to continually go deeper into the well in order to make sense of it all. Even though you have to suspend your disbelief a bunch in the way that the game is presented and the story that the game tells, its still a super interesting premise that does some really innovative things and tells a intriguing, albeit ridiculous story.

Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection (2015)

Hey, the set pieces in Uncharted are pretty cool. Yeah, I know that almost everyone on the planet is aware of this by now, but now that I've finally had the chance to get a first-hand look at all three of the Uncharted games back-to-back-to-back I can say that feeling holds true for me as well. The first one doesn't quite have have that spark of imagination that made the next two so special; there's a bunch of backtracking through areas you've been and suffers from a slower pace which makes Drake's Fortune the odd man out in the series. But I do think that Uncharted 2 and 3 serve up numerous moments of amazing action that are fun to look at and play, no matter how much control over the situation you actually have.

Uncharted 2 is definitely the gem of this trilogy. From the fantastic intro, to the train sequence to the part where you're jumping between vehicles in the mountains... I mean I could go on and on and you've heard this all before but its both fun to play and fun to look at. They do a good job of making every chapter feel special and like every moment is specifically crafted to be a unique experience. Even though the final chapters (with the bullet-sponge enemies) kind of dragged I couldn't help but feel great about Uncharted 2 as a whole. Still a great game in 2016. Uncharted 3 made a significantly less impact on me, but overall I still enjoyed the experience. My main complaints with the finale of the trilogy include the shooting felt like a step back from the previous game (only slightly) and there just weren't as many cool set pieces. But there was still more than enough stuff in there to make it an entertaining ride. The two main parts that stood out to me were the cargo plane and the cruise ship. The fact that this game still looks excellent 5 years later is a testament to how well those scenes were crafted. One of the reasons I really like the Uncharted series is that few games make me stop and say "Boy, what I'm doing right now is super cool" and this happened a fair amount over the course of them.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution (2011)

It was free on Xbox 360/One for January so I figured I'd finally give this one a shot. Deus Ex's futuristic world is a great one that's a lot of fun to explore. The numerous different ways to approach a particular area is definitely its strong point and they lean into it in a great way. Being able to have at least three options for almost every scenario allows you to approach the game in whatever way you want, putting attribute points into your character based on the way you to play it. The combat definitely feels more stiff than I would like it to, and the stealth in that game doesn't rate compared to a game like Dishonored, but the multitude of options you have at your disposal sometimes allow you to bypass combat completely. Having never played the original Deus Ex, I was pleasantly surprised with much freedom they give you to approach a situation however you'd like. In certain spots you can definitely tell this game is almost 5 years old, but many other aspects still feel great in 2016.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (2013)

Even though I'm terrible at character action games, I still managed to enjoy Metal Gear Rising. You already know Platinum Games has a sterling track record of making these style of games fun to play, and I was pleased to find out Kojima didn't go too crazy off the deep end in this game(save for one pizza-eating security guard that made me want to throw my controller across the room). Revengeance strikes a good balance between giving us more insight into the post SOP world of Metal Gear and not creating new unanswered questions that we'll never get answers to. Kojima's writing has never exactly been my thing, but there enough interesting characters, ridiculous cutscenes and fun battles to keep me entertained throughout. And hey, slices enemies in half (or into hundreds) and gnawing on their innards is super satisfying.

Syndicate (2012)

I wish I liked this game, but seeing as I played Deus Ex right before this one, I'd much rather take that cyber future over the one created by Syndicate. Through its short 4 hour campaign, nothing about Syndicate really stood out to me. The shooting didn't really feel all that great to me, and the powers were cool at first but became stale after the first few times I used them. It doesn't really do much with its story beside the well-worn trope of future mega-corporations wreaking havoc on society and I found it really hard to understand the motivations behind the characters in the game. Your sidekick, Jules Merit, is just terrible, spewing out idiotic dialogue and murdering civilians without any reason as to why he's doing so. I had more fun with the co-op but it just didn't have the staying power that I was hoping for. There aren't a whole lot of maps to choose from and they don't do a good enough job of having variability between them. Most of the maps have very similar objectives and the ones that are in them are not particularly exciting. Most of the time its either "Kill these enemy agents" or "shoot guys and then breach a thing if you have to". I beat it and am pretty sure I'm done with it.

Rise of the Tomb Raider (2015, Xbox One version)

Thanks to @ltdestroyer I got myself a copy of the new Tomb Raider. After putting 25 hours into over the course of a couple weeks, I can say I really enjoyed my time with it, its a major step up over the first one. It uses its open world format to greater effect, whether you're hunting for materials or scrounging for collectables. Once the game opens up it gives you a lot to explore and a lot to do. The gunplay is serviceable, if unspectacular but they give you enough weapons and abilities that you have many more options other than just shooting people. In addition it tells a more interesting story, making Lara a more relateable human being as opposed to the nice lady-turned-murderer that she was in the first game. Also its one of the numerous games that added a grappling hook to its repertoire, which was a little tricky to understand how to use at first but eventually I got the hang of it. Overall it was a game that I enjoyed enough to 100 percent it, finding every tomb, getting every document and completing every challenge.

The Witness (2016)

Even as a person who doesn't always enjoy puzzle games, I found myself really enjoying The Witness. You can definitely count me as one of the people who "get" what the game is trying to do. Although some of the areas combine mechanics from multiple areas, no two of the areas are exactly the same. I really like how each area has its own unique feel to it, both in an aesthetic sense and also with its own specific puzzles in that style to solve. It strikes a good balance between puzzles who solution only requires you to look at the information presented on the panels and puzzles who solution requires you to take in information from the external environment. Figuring out what is going on with those external environment puzzles is often super satisfying. There are a bunch of areas that really put your intellect to the test, from the ability to scour the environment to solve a puzzle to paying attention to subtle audio or visual clues, to your sense of spacial awareness (Damn you, tetris piece puzzles).

The "Jungle" and "Keep" areas weren't especially notable to me, but that was offset by me having an extraordinary time with the "Treehouse" and "Shady Trees" areas. It was a lot of fun solving puzzle after puzzle in those areas and the series of progressively harder challenges ramped up smoothly enough that it wasn't frustrating or too easy. Jonathan Blow did a good job of taking a particular puzzle and tweaking it slightly, so that even though it looks the same its actually much harder. The variations on puzzles you already know make you think differently about the puzzle you're solving, not every puzzle is going to have the exact same way to solve it. There's also a thing about the specific way you solve puzzles having an impact on the world that I shouldn't really talk about, but suffice to say its pretty mind blowing. Moreover, putting all my knowledge to the test in the "Town" area was great. Having everything I've learned up until that point culminate in puzzles that take mechanics from numerous areas seemed literally impossible at first, but then lead to some serious "A-HA!" moments that were among my favourite in the entire game. I didn't love the open world as much as a lot of people, but I do feel like The Witness uses its open world well. Being able to go to a different area when you're stuck on a puzzle is a smart idea and the different styles of each area were able to come together cohesively onto one island. Overall, I really loved the Witness. It used its basic to premise to great effect, getting a ton of mileage out of something so deceptively simple.

Half-way done

Mario and Luigi: Paper Jam (2016)

The Mario and Luigi games has been an up and down series throughout their 13 year lifespan. As I asked here, it seems like we've reached the point where not very many adults have much interest in this series anymore. Even though Bowser's Inside Story was a fantastic game, their next installment, Dream Team was horribly paced and just not interesting enough to hold my attention for very long. Paper Jam is a step in the right direction, but not really enough to completely renew my faith in the series. To talk about the positives first, the combat is much improved and its probably my favourite part of the game. Having three characters to play with strikes a good sweet spot and makes it trickier, but not too hard when you're on the defensive side. I've always loved how when you're being attacked if you time to your button presses well enough, you can always mitigate taking damage entirely or even do damage to enemies.

The combat and dialogue are good and the pacing is miles better than Dream Team, but there's still a bunch of dumb mini-games that keep Paper Jam from being wholly enjoyable. The times where you're forced to collect Paper Toad's in order to build your giant Papercraft range from boring to frustrating. While I do feel like the game would benefit from a nice distraction the Paper Toad collecting is a needless addition that doesn't do enough to justify its place in the game. In addition, the Papercraft battles themselves are also not a great addition. There's no depth and the combat basically boils down do you getting behind the enemy, knocking them over and then jumping on them. Add to the fact that all of these mini-games take a lot of time to complete makes large chunks of the game rather boring. There's a lot of things that drag Paper Jam down, but its not quite enough for me to put the game down entirely. Its not a bad game, but its good enough for me to keep playing it because I'm a big fan of this series. After I'm done with Xcom 2 I'll be jumping right back into Paper Jam in order to finish it up.

The "I started it but I'll play this later" Pile

Civilization V, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, & Divinity: Original Sin

Three really long games that I just picked up recently and got through the tutorials for all of them, but don't want to fully delve into until I know I can devote a lot of time to playing them. The Witcher and Divinity are both major wild cards that have a lot of good things going for them, but I'm not sure if the design of those games fully appeal to me. Obviously I've seen a lot of accolades thrown their way and hopefully I will be among the group that really enjoyed them.

So last month I went to Hong Kong to see a buddy of mine. Most of our time spent was playing video games so I figured I'd write about it!

I recorded a podcast if you want to listen to it

We talked about newer games like MGSV and Super Mario Maker and how those games do some really great things. The bulk of the podcast is us preparing for GOTY 2015. For Game of the year this year I decided I want to record my "Solo deliberations" - me deciding what the Top 10 Games of the Year are, by myself. Its a dumb idea that I think is going to be really stupid. I played over 70 games this year and for this podcast we discussed how I felt about each and every one of them, though not ranking any of them just yet . Great games like Far cry 4, Bloodborne and Rocket League as well as not-so-great games like Driveclub and Tetris Ultimate are all discussed. Its 2 hours 30 minutes long so if you have the time give it a listen!

Here's a podcast

I played 50 turns of all the Mario Parties... Don't do that

Okay so because of one @danryckert I decided to go through 50 turns of all the Mario parties over a span of two weeks with some friends from Hong Kong. Most of the people we played with were familiar with Mario Party and were willing participants. Not all of these were done with 4 people (Some people said they "Weren't available" on the days we wanted to play... Sure) but for all the games that had a 50 turn option, we did it. Here's how long each game took us.

• Mario party 1 took 2 hours 20 mins
• Mario party 2 took 2 hours 20 mins... A reasonable amount of time!
• Mario party 3 took 3 hours 15 mins - Waluigi's Island for life!
• Mario party 4 took 3 hours 30 mins
• Mario party 5 took 3 hours 20 mins
• Mario party 6 took 3 hours 33 mins
• Mario party 7 took 4 hours 20 mins. DEAR GOD HELP.
• Mario party 8 took 2 hours 50 mins
• Mario party 9 + 10 changed the format so it wasn't 50 turns. Neither took too long so that's cool

As you can see there was quite a variance for how long each game took. We tried to strike a good balance between playing the game as you properly should while also making the game move along and thankfully most of them didn't take over 4 hours. I'm really looking forward to the GB crew playing Mario Party 7 because I think it will take them more than 5 hours to finish it. The amount of extra mini-games and dumb extra stuff made MP7 a slog to get through. That game has forced Bowser Events every 5 turns so in a 50 turn game you have 10 instances of random BS (We had 2 instances of Bowser taking a star from a player for literally no reason) that also makes the game take longer and by the end we just wanted it to be over.

I think overall Mario party 10's Bowser Mode ended up being the most interesting. This isn't really an apt comparison, but its almost like Evolve in the way it pits one player against 4 others. However, in Bowser Party, the goal of the 4 player team is to not die. The only way to win is to not be annihilated by Bowser, which is kind of messed up in what's supposed to be a game aimed at a younger audience. Having said that, completely destroying 4 human players put a pretty huge smile on my face...

I don't think I need to state this out loud but I will anyway: Don't play Mario Party. Its dumb and its way too random in the way it hands out stars and changes the standing of its players. The minigames can occasionally be fun, but the awkward controls for the N64 titles as well as the multitude of poor minigames in each iteration of Mario Party makes it tough to even go through a single hour of Mario Party, let alone 3 or 4. As much as its fun to hit the L-trigger constantly to taunt, that doesn't make it a good game. Which it isnt. But hey, schadenfreude is a thing, so at least there's that! Right?

So I'm a person who has zero creativity. None. Thinking critically comes naturally but when it comes to actually making stuff, I just don't have many ideas of what I want to do. I can respect games like Minecraft and Day-Z for encouraging player experimentation and creation but I have no motivation to play them. Seeing pre-release videos of Super Mario Maker, though, has made me change my tune. Everything I've seen looks super impressive and I am incredibly eager to see what the game has to offer as well as jumping in there and creating levels of my own.

From what I've seen so far, it appears as though almost anything you want to put in a Mario level is available in Super Mario Maker. There are 4 different games for you to select from: Super Mario Bros, Super Mario Bros 3, Super Mario World and New Super Mario Bros U. Each has its own physics, control scheme, feel and items to use. Furthermore each game has 6 different background for you to choose from. From Ghost houses to Underground levels, Mario Maker has you covered. Each game has its own set of items and enemies for you to use depending on what game you choose. You can also use items on enemies to change the way they behave. Almost any enemy can be 'shaken' to change its characteristic (changing a green Koopa Ttroopa to a red one, for example). You can also feed things like mushrooms, wings and fire flowers to enemies. Want to make a bunch of flaming Goombas in your level? Go right ahead! They also give you a bunch of dumb sound effects and crazy items that you wouldn't normally see too much of. Whether you want to make levels the strictly adhere to the rules that are present or would rather just go completely crazy, its all there for you to play around with. Lastly and possibly most importantly, as you are placing stuff in your levels, the game plays music in time with what you are doing. If you're creating a Mario Bros level, the harmony will play in the background and if you place a goomba in the level it will sing "Goomba" as the harmony along with the music. Its a super smart touch that does a great job of putting a smile on your face.

But Super Mario Maker isn't just a game for people want to create Mario levels. Playing other people's level's is also a key part of the experience. The game is filled with a fair amount of search filters to find the Mario levels you want to play. Whether you want to search by difficulty, most upvoted, where it was made or something else, you're likely to find fun levels to play. In addition, the 100-Mario challenge is one way to play multiple levels in one go. On the easy difficulty, you have 100 lives to get through 8 human-made courses. These levels are seemingly picked at random and you're never going to know what kind of level you're going to get. You can also increase the difficulty to normal or hard and not only will you play tougher levels, but you need to complete 16 levels instead of 8. Its a nice way to just get out there and see what people are making and if the level you're playing is too hard, you can always just skip it.

Often times you'll see the release of a game come with questions such as "Who is this game for?" All of the cool ideas and smart creation tools in Super Mario Maker make me want to ask the question of "Who ISNT this game for?" Is there anyone out there who isn't interested in this game in some way, shape or form? If you aren't.... do you even like fun?

I should start this blog off by saying I really enjoyed my time with Dota 2. I have about 200 hours in that game and for the most part, I love it. However, there's just a handful of things about Dota 2 that kept it far away from being a video game that I would put into the 'elite tier' and instead was settled into the middle of my 2013 game of the year list. In Dota 2, the matches take too long, I was never really sure what I should be doing in the endgame, I had trouble understanding situational items, there were way too many heroes that I didn't enjoy playing, often times I would pick up a new hero and just have zero idea of what I should be doing and it was way too easy for one person to significantly sway the outcome of a match of Dota 2. As I'm starting to get the hang of Heroes of the Storm I'm coming to the realization that this game might (for me personally) fix every single one of the issues that I had with Dota. I'm having an incredible amount of fun with it.

Now I'm not going to go super in depth about what a MOBA is (I'm sure you know someone who has told you all about it) but I probably should explain what makes HOTS different and why it is that I like the changes they've made. First of all, you level as a team and not as individuals. This makes it so that everyone on your team 'potentially' has the same output and puts less pressure on you as an individual to perform your duties and not die. I have way more enthusiasm to play this game with friends since its more of a team focused game and I also there are less times that I feel like I ruined the game because of my poor play (Boy, those feelings in Dota are THE WORST!) Thankfully, less matches of HOTS end up in one hero one side becoming ridiculously overpowered and just steamrolling through the other team. The times when that happened in Dota were always super frustrating because when one guy started to snowball, it was often too hard to stop it and you just had to endure 20 more minutes of dying over and over until eventually they beat you. The team aspect in also present in the way you use your lanes. Often times you will be moving around between lanes depending on what situation your team is in. The maps are a lot smaller and there you can ride mounts, which means that navigating the battlefield is a lot easier.

There are multiple maps in Heroes of the Storm... MULTIPLE MAPS! Each map has its own specific and unique objective, and often times therein lies the key to victory. From collecting doubloons to pay a pirate who bombards the enemy keep with cannons to collecting 'tributes' that curse the enemy team, each map is different in what its objective is. It does a good job of having vastly different goals that require you to think differently about each map. A strategy or build that works well on one map may not be very well suited for another. This was a cool addition to the game that sometimes shifts your priority from killing heroes or pushing lanes to actually focusing your attention on something else, be it capturing an objective or map control of a specific area. Games are often A LOT quicker compared to Dota 2, thankfully. There's way less time spend being on the defensive, waiting for your opponents to attack, which i really hated in dota. Instead of spending time behind your tower chipping away at your enemies, you can often spend your time capturing objectives or roaming to different lanes to kill enemies. Its a lot more active and frankly, its a lot more fun.

There are zero items in the game and you don't level up your skills. In place of those two things they have talents, which you gain every few team levels. Talents let you pick various ways of upgrading your character, be it upgrading skills to have new effects/damage etc, giving you new abilities to use, or just giving you passive buffs that help in various situations. This makes it so that there is still depth to each hero, but its never particularly overwhelming. In addition, I found the heroes to be way easier to use than in Dota 2. Obviously there are still numerous heroes who are quite complicated but you can usually tell what a hero is supposed to do by reading his/her skills, instead of looking up a FAQ or cookie-cutter build.

Overall, Heroes of the storm is a game that has picked up steam over time until as of right now, its basically the only game I want to play. Whereas Dota 2 was a game I could only play one match, maybe two per sitting, I often find myself playing 3-6 matches of HOTS in a row, sometimes even with multiple sittings a day. There's way less things that frustrate me about Heroes of the Storm and while I can't speak to anything having to do with 'high level play', I can say that I feel like there is still a large amount of nuance to the gameplay. All of changes that were made to the MOBA seem like positive things and that's why I feel like for me personally, Heroes of the Storm is better than Dota 2.

Platformers are a genre where its really hard for one to stick out from the pack. No matter what mechanics you put in there, most basically boil down to moving the stick to move, pressing A to jump and sometimes having a run button. Make no mistake, Rayman Origins is definitely one of those. Its platforming mechanics are pretty standard and the levels are modestly fun. But having just recently played it this month for the first time, I can say the way it goes about it is something that I found to be really refreshing. The game is filled with those little touches that let you know that it's just oozing personality and that was the part of Origins that made me think that it was a fantastic game.

For me personally, the way platformers play has never been extremely satisfying. As long as the controls don't feel sluggish or unresponsive, I've never particularly cared about the way they feel (Super Meat Boy might be my one personal exception to this). I feel like most good platformers out there have controls that work, as they should. There's never any real reason why you should make a game with unintuitive controls, especially in that genre. Rayman Origins platforming feels pretty good for what it is. It has wall jumping and basic attacks for you to defeat enemies and a fairly brisk pace to its gameplay. It also has two hidden areas in each level that contain electoons for you to rescue. Its a nice way to encourage exploration without getting too over the top. Rayman Legends, a game I just finished this week, has 10 things to collect in each level. I felt like that was just too much and I had to play through the levels much more slowly than Origins in order to collect everything. So for me personally, Origins level design and pace were better for me to enjoy the levels at a good speed.

The real reason I'm writing this blog about this game in particular is just how it put a gigantic smile on my face the entire time I was playing it. Origins is filled with so much personality that really add a lot to the game. It has a bunch ridiculous moments peppered throughout it, that just show you how crazy Michel Ancel really is. Since this game is basically his creation, you really get the impression that he is a dude who would be really exciting to be around. Many times in Rayman Origins I would just stare at the screen, wondering what is going on, with a gigantic smile on my face (see the image above). Another highlight is the soundtrack, which does an excellent job of straddling the line between genuinely good and, well... you should just listen to it to know what i mean. I also really enjoyed how at the end of each world they give you a really easy level where you are just collecting loads of lums while zooming through the level. The part of the game where you collect Queen lums (or whatever the hell they are) which give you a brief period where you get double lums for each one you collect. The fact that the lums would dance around combined the cutesy music made me glad that they were in plentiful supply.

Part of Origins that was a little weird was its difficulty. Its not an easy game by any stretch of the imagination and the second half of the game, which has you going back through similar looking areas will really test your skills. It almost feels like a new game plus situation even though its still considered part of the main game. The treasure hunt levels are also a bit of a pain. Making you execute spot-on platforming in a game where the controls feel a little loose is not always ideal. Those levels can also be quite lengthy which sometimes makes them feel more like trial and error more than testing my skill. It was more of a relief than an accomplishment having finished all of those levels. The boss battles are also tricky, but I just chalk up my frustration with those to not liking boss battles in most video games (I'm a little weird, I know).

I'll wrap up this blog by saying that Rayman Origins is a game that makes me happy. Sure there were parts of it that were maybe a little dull but that didn't stop me from having a huge smile on my face for most of the time that I was playing it. Even though platformers are maybe starting to get a little stale these days, this game was one I could still enjoy in 2015. If you like a good time, you should play this game.

February is a time where there's not really anything exciting going on. That doesn't mean I can't keep myself busy, though. I played through some games, spent my club nintendo coins on mario party 2 (don't do that!) and recorded my first ever podcast with my old university roommate. So overall it was a fairly good month

Transistor

Transistor was free on Playstation plus so I decided to give that game a go and I'd say I really enjoyed it. Playing around with all the different functions was super interesting. The part of Transistor that I really enjoyed was the ability to use your functions as either a primary function for direct use or as a modifier for other functions. In addition, the fact that game gives you additional story information by using different skills in different slots encouraged experimentation with other skills. This was a very smart way to get you to play around with different combinations to see what works best for you.

As far as the story goes, I would probably say that I am mostly in agreement with the general consensus that it was a little hard to follow at times. Sometimes they didn't give you enough info to figure out what was really going on, but by the end I felt like I had just wrapped my brain around it. Overall I really like transistor; good gameplay, good voice acting, great soundtrack.

Geometry Wars 3: DIMENSIONS!

Okay, so theres no exclamation mark in the title of the game, I just feel like every time you say "dimensions", you have exclaim it and also make ridiculous hand gestures. Getting to the actual game, I think I would say that I enjoy the third game the most in the series. Having an adventure mode with 50 levels was fun to play around with. Most of the different level geometry they came up with pretty fun, although some of the shapes made it a little difficult to see what was around the corner. You can earn up to three stars in each level of adventure mode, and I had a huge compulsion to replay all of the levels and get all the stars. When you also add leaderboards, I spent a lot of time replaying levels, rarely ever getting frustrated.

A neat addition for this game was the inclusion of drones. You get your choice from four drones that help you out by either shooting at enemies, collecting spare geoms and the like. My go to drone was the collect drone, because I wanted to get my multiplier up as quickly as possible. For me personally, geoms were a thing that I'm glad they brought back in Geometry Wars 3, because without them, you play super defensively. With this game, though, you actually have to run into the fray in order to get any kind of high score, adding to the stress of each level.

I really enjoyed the power-ups in Geometry Wars 3. Having a temporary boost to your firepower, or being able to suck in geoms from further away was a cool idea. In addition, the new modes they added for this game were pretty great. Checkpoint was my personal favourite, where you have a time limit and every time you kill all the enemies on screen you get more time added. It's a mode that really forces you to play quickly and the moments where you have barely any time left are super tense and exciting.

Even though I wasn't a huge fan of the boss battles, I had a blast with the game. Everyone was unsure if this game was necessary when it came out but for what it was, I would say it is a mighty fine Geometry Wars game.

Also, I recorded a podcast!

So earlier in the week, I recorded a podcast with a buddy of mine. Its my first one, we talk about video games and other stuff. If you have a spare two hours to devote to complete nonsense, why not give it a listen and see how badly we can carry on a Skype conversation?

Here's a podcast