Presented in chronological order for everyone to not care about, it's the 2013 edition of games I've completed in 2013!
This list's actual starting date is around December 24th, as I was already finished with my own internal "of the year" deliberations for last year by that point.
With that said, let's get started!
Showing 1-10 of 43 items
Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken is a fairly harmless 2D side scrolling shooter that takes a lot of patience to enjoy and would take a miracle to love. Awful controls and shooting, pitiful to frustrating enemy placement and behaviour, and a lack of consistency in the game's own rules (sometimes you can take cover...sometimes you can't!) make the game hard to recommend, even at a bottom-of-the-bucket price point. The game's only real strong points are the background graphics and decent soundtrack provided by New World Revolution. While there are subtle hints of a good game here, getting just a whiff of some tasty fried chicken isn't enough to cure one's hunger, now is it? (I will not apologize for that terrible joke.)
NyxQuest is a graceful little platformer with exceptionally tight control, a unique and detailed aesthetic, and a wondrous little score that not only surprised me, it delighted me almost the entire way through. The platforming with flying and floating controls combined with using the mouse to move various objects in the environment just feels fantastic. The level designs and puzzles are cleverly built around all the skills at your disposal, and the game's pacing is such that it builds upon previous challenges while it doles out new mechanics and powers for you to play around with very quickly. The only real sticking point is the stage entitled "Field of Argos" which may drive you up the wall in frustration with its somewhat unfair randomness, but perseverance and quick reflexes should see you through with enough practice. For the quality of game you're getting here and the price point, you absolutely can't go wrong with NyxQuest.
Nonsensical WarioWare wannabe on crack for the PC? Juvenile and pointed deconstruction of the point and click adventure genre? Maybe both? Maybe just nonsense for the sake of nonsense? My girlfriend and I burned through McPixel's Story Mode, most of the hidden stages unlocked by finding all the gags, and all available free DLC in about two hours in one night, and odds are you will too. There isn't a lot to McPixel's design other than finding absurd solutions to each 20-second stage and watching the solutions or failures play out. One or two clicks will be enough to know if you've succeeded or failed, and there's really not a lot of logic to what you'll be doing and interactions are rarely ever what you'd expect. The humor may be a bit to juvenile for some and the overall premise far too simplistic to warrant a full-price purchase, but I've honestly spent two hours entertaining myself with much worse than than the otherwordly silliness this pixelated and crude mess has to offer. Just be sure to enjoy it with somebody else in the room, because McPixel's humor really doesn't fly very far when it's just you. The magic happens when other people are there to react.
Hotline Miami is both an amazingly engaging and fun game as well as one with the potential to frustrate one to the point of submission. The psychedelic aesthetic and late 80's coke-binged atmosphere are amazing, punctuated further by a pulsing, trippy, and sleepy Sunday morning style soundtrack that will assault the ears with thick bass and beats as much as it will soothe them with drugged-out experimental compositions. The fast and frantic nature of the gameplay is satisfying and visceral, and it's hard not to get just a little giddy while you paint the floors and walls with your enemies' remains. There's so much moment to moment fun in Hotline Miami that it's easy to recommend on that alone. Drawbacks however come from the lack of precision with controls and difficulty spikes that are entirely and at times pretty unfair. Aiming melee and ranged weapons alike is quite an ordeal with keyboard+mouse or a gamepad and that lack of precision will cause a lot of unwarranted deaths. Enemy AI is at times completely random in its behaviour and what amounts to boss battles in the game are really the worst parts of the game. If left in the oven just a bit longer to work out the control and AI issues, Hotline Miami would have been one for the ages. As it stands, it's easy to recommend with the only caveat being a patience for failure that may sometimes not be your fault.
*Played with Extended Cut, From Ashes, and Leviathan DLC.
For me, Mass Effect 3 felt like catching up with an old friend I haven't seen in years and witnessing the change in them. Good or bad, they're still who they are, but change is both undeniable and oftentimes unavoidable.
Gameplay-wise, ME3 was simply the most satisfying for me. The frantic pace of combat and improved enemy AI made actually PLAYING the game not feel like an afterthought and its challenging moments were satisfying to overcome because my tactics worked out. So yeah, ME3 is TOTALLY FINE as a game.
But that's not the main reason anyone comes to Mass Effect. It's the story, and though I felt pretty much all the conclusions to the major sticking points of the galaxy were handled in rather predictable and contrived manners, I still felt invested enough in the world and characters to care when the galaxy decides to come together for a common goal.
The Extended Cut ending I received only reinforced my stance in how I viewed the world of Mass Effect. I felt, personally, that at the end of the day my journey was worth it and I'd done the right thing, even if heavy sacrifices had to be made.
So while the whole package of Mass Effect 3 is incredibly scummy with the original endings being dog turds and information contained in Leviathan being as important as it is and stuck behind a pay wall, my experience with Mass Effect as a whole remains one of the more fulfilling experiences I've had this generation.
Fractured Soul's mind-bending dual screen gimmick is a great idea to base a game on (though it's not an original one). When a game hinges solely on so few core elements (swapping screens and firing a peashooter) those few mechanics need to be executed near-flawlessly. For the most part, they are. You have tight, responsive controls that provide a snappy and immediate experience that's easy to pick up and play, and the puzzle element of swapping screens to eliminate enemies and navigate treacherous areas can be very satisfying when your brain finally puts it all together. Fractured Soul's main sticking point, however, is that its level design requires an almost inhuman ability to perform pixel-perfect screen swaps and jumps to ever see the end. The frustration sets in early and only actually gives you any time to breathe during the final stage. Being asked to perform so flawlessly not only for ratings but just to advance just gets irritating and it took me a good month or two of putting this one down and picking it back up to finally see it through. This isn't in any way a game for people who may have impaired vision due to how much attention must be paid to both screens at once, and it's an even harder sell to those easily frustrated by a game that asks damn near perfection from almost every single action. Overall, I liked it, but it's not a game I'll be revisiting for better ratings or unlocks given the insane requirements.
I originally reviewed this game on my site January 17th, 2010, and that was after already spending a good month or so with it. Three years after the fact, I'm adding this game to my 2013 list because, after three long years of chipping away at all the content this game has to offer, I have finally completed it 100%. All main game routes and challenges have finally been crushed and I had a hell of an awesome time doing it over the last few years. Seriously, this is a PSP game to own. It's fun to play, the style is fresh and adorable, and the sheer amount of content is mind boggling.
A nice little 30 minute piece of satire that says what it wants to in a humorous and cute way without ever appearing cynical or jaded. There's really not much else I can say about it other than you could spend 80 Microsoft Points on worse.
I wasn't aware of this game until the Quick Look by Ryan and Patrick, and afterward I was sold immediately, grabbing a copy for both my 360 and PC. At the $1/$3 price points, it was really hard to go wrong. Having spent a good six or so hours between both versions and finally "completing" the adventure, I have to say that I'm amazed at how many random scenarios there are, and I was still running into situations I'd never seen all the way through my final victorious run. At its core, the game combines elements of roguelikes (your adventures will rarely last over ten minutes due to imminent death or success) and very simple shooting sections which will function either as a shmup or dual stick shooter depending on the scenario. The gameplay itself may not be amazingly engaging, but the rapid pace and amazingly short playtimes are what make the game fun and easy to pick up and play. The dry matter-of-factness with which every story is told provides tons of genuine laugh out loud moments and the randomization gives you plenty of stories to share with your friends on how you took them on a super amazing wagon adventure and they took a buffalo to the face. Best $4 I've spent this year so far.
If Asura's Wrath isn't necessarily a good or even fun game, it's certainly commendable for being an interesting experiment that focuses entirely on spectacle and your investment in the story. It's essentially a CG anime series that you...kinda interact with through timed button presses and extremely terrible arena and rail shooter combat. There don't seem to be any fail states for missing button prompts and it seems almost impossible to die in the portions of the game you're forced to play. We've never seen anything quite like Asura's Wrath, so it's hard to describe it to people. The story and spectacle are nothing short of absolutely ridiculous and over-the-top at all times. Just when you think the size and scope of what's going on can't possibly get any larger, flashier, or brutal, Asura's Wrath just keeps one-upping itself all the way through. The story and characters and their circumstances are the one and only reason one should come to this game, because the parts you have to actually "play" are mind-numbingly bad. The arena combat and rail shooter potions are a jumbled mess of bad controls, cheap enemies, terrible framerates (which also mess up button prompts out of combat), and nauseating cameras. It gets annoying trying to fight enough enemies or damage a boss enough just so you can enter Burst mode and continue the story. The parts where you actually PLAY Asura's Wrath are throwaway padding that could have been left out, but it likely would have never been given a green light under those conditions as well. Whether it's worth slogging through those portions of the game is entirely dependent on your attachment to the world. The game also falls victim to Capcom's scummy DLC practices in that the ACTUAL ending to the game has to be bought. The entire final chapter of the game is behind a pay wall, and completing the game normally without it actually leaves lots of unanswered questions, drops you off at a cliffhanger, and gives you a prompt taunting you that the ending you want to see is DLC. This is the reason everyone hates you, Capcom. Asura's Wrath is certainly an experiment I'd like to see elaborated upon, but it's hard to say what the right balance between gameplay and story might be. Maybe the game's just as enjoyable if you simply YouTube a playthrough and treat it like an anime series. That's how I approached the ending DLC and it felt just the same as when I was "playing" it.