The 2016 Backlog
16 items in list • Created
cav829
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Recent Reviews
All reviewsAbzû2016
4 out of 5 starsWhat do you think of when you picture bodies of water in video games? Whether it’s the Dopefish from Commander Keen, the terrifying drowning music from Sonic the Hedgehog, getting repeatedly eaten by sharks in Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, or Soma just in general, someone might be given the mistaken impression a healthy fear of the water is requisite for working in the video game industry. As someone who grew up…
Ratchet & Clank2016
4 out of 5 starsThere was a time when a year seemingly couldn't go by without a Ratchet & Clank game. Insomniac Games released a whopping thirteen Ratchet & Clank games between 2002 and 2013. Thus, even a three year absence at the start of Sony's latest console generation was notable, even if the intention was to use the latest game as part of promotional efforts for the recent animated movie. Concerns that the result would come…
Fire Emblem Fates2015
3 out of 5 starsNote: this review covers both Birthright and Conquest Rather than be the final entry in a series rapidly declining in popularity, Fire Emblem Awakening proved to be one of the 3DS's biggest hits. The introduction of new mechanics involving unit pairing, a more robust social link style system that allowed you to marry units and create child units, and greater ability for users of different skill levels to customize…
Hyper Light Drifter
2 out of 5 starsThe highlight of the game was easily the opening cinematic Hyper Light Drifter is a game that seemed built for me. I'm a sucker for unique art styles. I adore the Dark Souls series. Games like Metroid and Zelda putting an emphasis on exploration are among my favorites. Unfortunately, I found this game to be a victim of a disjointed design ethos. Hyper Light Drifter attempts to take elements of a number of different…
Lists
All listsGame of the Year 2014
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Game of The Year 2014 Users Choice
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Articles
All articlesCav's GotY 2017 List: I'll still be playing 2017 games until 2019 at this rate
Jan 2, 2018
Boy games were long in 2017. Sure, this might have been the best year in gaming maybe in two decades, but I admire the person who got in all the ones worth playing with how bloody long they all were. If all these open-world games could kindly come to some kind of agreement to reduce their average length by about thirty hours next year, it’d be just great. All right, I’ll stop being a curmudgeon...
Clearing the Backlog Week of January 8th: Owlboy, Glittermitten Grove, and Obduction
Jan 13, 2017
So I've decided to start a series of quick blog updates as I try to clear my backlog from 2016 before games start happening again. It's worth noting that the first week's worth of updates will include what I've actually been playing the past two weeks. It's also worth noting I've been spending more time with two of my favorite games from 2016: Hitman and Overwatch. As a quick Hitman update, I m...
I played too many video games again: Cav's Top 10 games of 2016
Dec 31, 2016
Let's face it: 2016 sucked. But it was a hell of a year for video games at least. It was such a good year I needed an extra couple weeks to finish playing the last few games I had hoped to finish before writing this list. Let's get right down to it. A Series of Random Awards/Complaints/Whinings The Top Game I Have Sitting Around I Need to Play Still: Final Fantasy XV Runners Up: Obduction, King...
2016 in Review: Say Something, Damn It
Dec 24, 2016
I'm growing tired of the complacency shown in video game storytelling. For a few brief moments, I thought we might have turned a corner in 2015. From indie games such as SOMA, Cibele, and Life is Strange, to AAA games such as Witcher 3, it was actually a year where gamers could hold their heads high and proudly proclaim why yes, video games can tell meaningful tales. And then, 2016 was a crushi...
2016 in Review: How Shooters Got Their Groove Back
Dec 22, 2016
Remember Evolve? Me neither. The year 2015 was a rough one for the shooter genre. Turtle Rock’s lofty hopes for Evolve as an eSport were crushed under the weight of microtransactions. It was soon followed by the pedestrian and tone-deaf Battlefield: Hardline. The fall brought us a series of middling shooters: Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, Star Wars: Battlefront, Halo 5, and Rainbow Six Siege. Even...
The Potential Impact of Sombra: Where's the Fun in Playing Fair?
Nov 9, 2016
Sombra has been out a whole two days on the PTR, so it’s time to jump to a bunch of conclusions that will obviously all be proven correct. I’ve spent a lot of time the past few days playing her on the PTR as well as watching streams and analysis of her gameplay. While the following will be nothing more than speculation based on all this early information, I think there is a good sense forming a...
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