Yeah it's an awkward phrasing, not all of these came out this year, and they're not all necessarily *bad* games, but the games I enjoyed playing least from 1 (least fun) - 10 (not as bad, but still not fun)...
Apparently the game originally had mircotransactions but were taken out. However, it doesn't seem like the gameplay was balanced to take into account the fact that those boosts aren't present any more (since really they're there to goad you into buying to get past intentionally frustrating parts). After a dull start where you massacre everything pretty handily, the game suddenly becomes impossible without excessive amounts of grinding, and since leveling up gives the most meagre of increases, I mean *excessive*. The humour is a complete miss for me, the pixel graphics I can take, but because of the completely unbalanced gameplay this was one of the most frustrating games of the year that a company dared charge me money for. Basically the game is just a map and a battle system, and the battle system isn't much fun.
The most generic horror game you could imagine, in terms of spook tactics, storyline (including delivery device, ie. finding notes everywhere for no reason) and puzzles.
Perfect example of an unfinished game being sold, where they literally say part 2 would come "soon". I never played it though (if its even out), since part 1 was so bare bones and just not much fun to play. It was at least slightly more fun to play than Daylight though.
Bad keyboard/mouse support set this off to a bad start. But really, it never gets any better than technically competetant. Boring, samey environments and enemies, a crafting system that is incredibly cumbersome and upgrades that don't really have any great effect. Bad comedy, annoying characters and a "go back to every previous location" quest near the end of the game.
A bland side on shooter, technically competant, but underwhelming and boring. It being sepia did it no favours.
Lolz random jokes dudez. A gag collection with a thin suggestion of a plot that quickly wears thin. Humour's a personal preference thing, but I didn't really find it that funny. Buy a joke book instead. Looks nice though.
I checked in everyday for about 2 weeks and not once did I find anything the game did amusing. For a game promoting the idea of "friendship", all these asshats want to do is fuck. I've seen pictures and recollections of things other people have experienced, and it just reeks of trying too hard to be random. To get the most out of the game you need to flood it with Miis... Then play one of the mini games with them, over and over... There's also only about a handful of mini games.
This really is a "nothing" game, to the extent I'd forgotten I'd played it. Mediocre in every sense, except the gameplay which is just dull and uninspired. The plot and allies offer nothing interesting, with the exception of Mathras, he was pretty cool.
The atmosphere is great, the presentation outstanding... But that's it. Without wanting to shamelessly promote my review, I catalogued pretty much every problem I have with the game there. If you like fighting assembly line Androids with a selection of weaponry that doesn't really feel very powerful, you'll love this game.
I've been trying to collate my thoughts on this, but haven't really penned them all. Dark Souls' world felt eerie, oppressive and mystical. Dark Souls 2's world feels like a terrible attempt at trying to recapture that without much thought. The areas don't really flow very effectively from one to the next, and worse, the world just isn't very inspiring. This led to a lot of aimless wandering between areas to stumble upon the next newly opened area. When the game ended, I didn't even know who the final boss was. Cameo/rehashed bosses and most the new ones fighting in the exact same way doesn't really help (Mirror Knight guy and the Chariot were cool though). It's hard to buy the world as hostile and oppressive when the first place you go is a hut of old ladies ("Ha ha, you're doing to die lots", really?), then a central hub village. Having to travel back to it to level up was extremely frustrating. The NPCs were dull compared to the tale of Solaire. Also with swords the second slash of a combo would routinely just go straight through enemies.
It's not a bad game, but it feels like a soulless cash grab to capitalise on the sudden success of Dark Souls.
