by tom_omb
Since I find I'm playing fewer games the year they come out I find my game of the year lists aren't as representative of what I'm playing as they could be.
This was written as a private exercise so express my thoughts on the games I play, but you're more then welcome to read. I've noticed my writing has changed throughout the year. The act of writing this list has impacted the way I think about games while playing them. I've enjoyed it and I think I'll continue into 2019.
Showing 1-10 of 29 items
December - January Last year's E3 presentation of this game got me hyped to play Wolfenstein II! It inspired me to replay The New Order since I hadn't completed it originally. While I love the story and the world of these games, my anticipation for the sequel was somewhat squashed by the intense difficulty and ammo scarcity of that replay. The launch coverage rekindled that fire, but I came to the conclusion that the easiest difficulty was for me. I picked it up late in the year, too late for it to be considered for my GotY list for 2017. I do not regret my decision to play on easy. Most of the fighting was trivialized, but it was still possible to get overwhelmed and die. I don't want to imagine the court room battle on any other difficulty. What I love is the pulpy tone that Wolfenstein strikes. It's full of over the top humor and shameless Nazi killing action. I can't think of a better example of a game to takes on the current political climate and racism in America.
December - January When I played at launch I completed every shrine and obsessively upgraded just about every armor set. Even the ones I didn't use. I eventually drew the line at the useless Amiibo armor that required excessive Moonshard and ore farming. Last spring I knew there was more DLC coming for my GotY 2017, but I was pretty sure I was otherwise finished. The first pack didn't really get me back into the game. I dabbled with the trials, but figured I'd give them another shot when the "real" DLC pack came out. I hit a snag pretty early on in the final DLC progression and found myself going back to my old habits. I started farming those materials like a crazy person. It was just a great excuse to get back out and explore this amazing world. At the same time I ended up farming the Stone Colossi for the monster badges I never really gave much thought to before. Once I finished the DLC I went back to do the trials. In Zelda games trial dungeons are not my favorite, but I had to fully upgrade the Master Sword! Forcing myself to play the trials taught me to engage with the combat in a way I never needed to until then, I'm grateful for that. Although I still used a guide for the later sections, a few tips made them much more manageable. Surely after I upgraded the all the armor, master sword, and completed the DLC I was finished with the game. If I were to collect the Koroks, you might as well lock me away in a padded room.... on the other hand it's a glaring omission to a completionist like myself. And I discovered so many areas of this world I had never seen in my first 150 hours. So, in January of 2018, after only collecting 200 Korok seeds and competing essentially everything else I set out on a new mission to collect the remaining 700. It was a blast! I had a Hyrule map and Giant Bomb video or Netflix doc on my computer screen as I went on the greatest scavenger hunt of my life. It took me nearly all month, but I got the golden poop, along with the last of the monster badges. This is a real good game!
February - March - April This was at the top of my 2017 games of the year I didn't play list. I love history and my favorite thing about the Assassin's Creed series is jumping into these meticulously researched historical worlds. After collecting Koroks in Zelda I had established a habit of watching videos while clearing out the open world map. This continued with Assassin's Creed Origins. I've never felt compelled to play an Assassin's Creed game all the way to completion before, yet I'm just about to cap this one off with a Platinum trophy (including all the DLC). I like the lead character, Bayek, and the story, but I didn't necessarily follow the thread the whole way. Possibly my fault for distracting myself with online videos or side activities within the game. I enjoy AC:O best as a stealth game. I found the combat pretty frustrating. The Defenses of enemies with tower shields were nearly impenetrable and boss fights were dull. They lasted ages and they hit hard, so if you weren't careful you could die from a single hit. This lead to spending much of the fight circling out of range and waiting for my health to cap. Perhaps I could have made better use of my arsenal of skills and abilities. Yet, enemies' movements are unpredictable in the worst way. Their windows of vulnerability after a stun are non-existent after they are stunned or performing a big combo move. Also, what's with fire in this game? It can spread crazy fast. The tiniest brush with an innocent flame can drain your entire health in moments. Is this my favorite Assassin's Creed game? I'd need to revisit Black Flag to know for sure, but it's between the two.
March I've been waiting for Horizon to go on sale for months. It finally did, and for reasons that puzzle me now, I thought the days before the final AC:O DLC released would be the perfect time to play it. Jumping from Zelda to AC:Origins to Horizon I felt the degrading of the core mechanics. Particularly Traversal, combat and the bow. Climbing in Zelda is a phenomenally liberating way to explore that world. It's pretty good in AC:O, although I missed being able to jump off cliffs with the sail cloth. But it's very limited in HZD, finding the specific climbing points was a chore. Too often they were not where you need them and hard to spot. HZD was not a bad game, I was into the world building, aspects of the story and the dinosaur robot enemies with components you shoot off is really rad. I finished the main story, found all the collectibles, but didn't have much of a desire to do many side quests or finish the DLC. What at sticks with me, from my time playing this game, were the nagging little things that hampered the experience: Crafting: it was impossible to find raccoons, and if you did it might not have dropped what you needed! Health plants: sometimes there were never any around, and Fire Kiln Roots were the same colour! Inventory management: no quick sell, boxes within boxes! Deathbringers: so many cool dinosaurs, yet the boss robot they keep reusing is just a box with guns on it. Collectable NPCs are just vendors: the rewards are underwhelming and there's no fanfare when you collect them all.
April Found myself playing Switch a lot more do to my new job with a lot of downtime. I thought I'd for sure get Steam World Dig 2 next on Switch, but Stardew's price bumped it ahead come buying time. Stardew does a great job of easing players in by drip feeding goals each day. They kept me playing for a little while. I ultimately fell off because it was frustrating to play. Walking everywhere I'd frequently get lost. I get that players would gradually learn town's layout over time, but it's a big town with lots of dead ends, forests and rivers. Interface issues and little nagging things wore me down. Like not being able to buy anything at the store because the shop keeper wasn't standing at the counter. He was in the store, it was open, but I couldn't buy a thing. No wonder he's going out of business.
April I bought this back in December. I skipped the Walking Dead game that came after Season 2, but I've been anticipating this one because I'm interested in following Clementine's story. Since I bought it I kept putting it off. It can be hard to muster enthusiasm for the samey gameplay of a Telltale game and there's an unfamiliar face, bigger than Clem's, on the cover art. Turns out that face is Javi, this season's playable character. I quite enjoyed his family's journey and how they fit into Clem's story. Particularly Javi's relationship with his brother, a character I started off hating, but grew to have an understanding for by the end. That said, it's still a Telltale ass Telltale game. I get that having a time limit gives tension and consequence to conversations, but why does it have to be before the NPC finishes speaking? Sometimes I don't know what I'm responding to or I can't read all my options. I found out when I began playing that there's a new game coming this year featuring Clem, it's supposed to be her final chapter. When I started didn't think I could play two more Walking Dead Telltale Games. But now that I finished the New Frontier, I'm definitely on the hook for another one of these.
April Four months into the year and I've gotten to my first game released in 2018! Sunday, April 22 At the point of writing this I've been playing for two days. Since I started playing Friday afternoon I've only stopped playing for long enough to eat, sleep, and leave the house for an hour yesterday. In most games within an hour or two you discover the structure reveals itself and it becomes fairly predictable what you'll be doing for the rest of the game. Not since Paper Mario 2 has a game mixed things up this much and kept me guessing. It continues to keep surprising me. The combat is exhilarating, I'm flying of the seat of my pants. Barely scraping through encounters as I learn the new abilities. The last thing I did before heading to bed last night was a boss encounter (the one in the dark) that I completed on my second attempt one hit away from death using every advantage I could take. The move-set isn't complex, but I'm great at hitting the wrong buttons. Right now it's a tight rope. I hope I can master it rather than get overtaken. The relationship between Kratos and Atreus is just starting to unravel. But it touches on masculine troubles with intimacy that I personally deeply identify with. My Father and Step-Father were in an accident years ago. My father was killed. Atreus, at one point, expresses identical sentiments I have had about my Step-Father. He says the wrong person died, only he was speaking of his dead mother. At this point in our game I identify with his non-relationship with Kratos. We both don't hate our step father figures, and we each make attempts at shallow connections, but we will never be close. I expect that to change for Kratos and Atreus as the game progresses, but it's probably too late for us. I'm sure I'll be thinking about this game all day at work today. May 22 Now that I've cooled from my initial impression I will say what I especially love about GoW is the exploration. The hub world changes as you play through and finding new areas in environment you've previously explored is a blast. I've been hearing some people complain about finding all of the Ravens. Ravens are my jam, but some of the tougher combat encounters I want nothing to do with. I found when finishing a hard fight, I was just pissed off at the game. Not exuberant and self satisfied like when completing a Cuphead boss. Attacks can be faster than Kratos's animations. Some of these Valkyrie fights require constant dodging, with little no no window for attacks. I was nearing a platinum trophy, but ended up not even bothering with most of the Valkyries. I also loved how the story draws from the myths. After completing the game I read Neil Gaiman's "Norse Mythology". It shed a lot of light on how the game drew inspiration and where the story is going.
May-August With the new expansion coming later this year I figured I'd hop in early and catch up on all the stuff I missed in the past year. Broken Isles Flying, new playable sub races, class mounts, and Argus, the new demon infested planet to explore. Trying to curb my ALToholism by dumping some professions. So far I've only really been playing my rogue. They added 4 more character slot per realm, so that can't last. I also joined a new guild that is annoyingly persistent about trying to involve its members in guild activities. Maybe this is what I need to break my single player habits. If not, atleast it's nice having some green chat to occasionally engage with. An improvement over my old ghost town guild. June 23 Well, my altoholism is in full effect now. I'm half way to getting all 12 class mounts. These require completing the class hall story quests and, annoyingly, each character needs to complete the same Legionfall questing achievement too. 6 mounts earned, two 110s working on these quests, and four still left to level from 102. Invasions pop up periodically and really help with the leveling. Hopefully I'll finish before the prepatch next month. August 11 Completed my goal just in time for the prepatch. Ditched that other guild for a new, friendly, less pvp obsessed one. As fun as the prepatch story quests have been, there hasn't been much new to do the past few weeks besides that. I tried running a few old raids I've never completed before, but I've been taking time off from WoW lately. Decided watching movies or a few episodes of Nathan For You was a better use of my time. But I'm really excited for how they are setting up the plot for this expansion and there are only a few days to go before launch!
May I enjoyed the first game well enough and I heard plenty of acclaim for the sequel. It still wasn't quite enough to get me on board. I didn't think I needed to play another one of those. But now my habits have changed. I've been playing my handheld games much more than I would before this job. So it was high on my Switch wishlist. I love exploration gameplay and SWD2 satisfies my needs with a cool twist on the Metroid-vania genre. It has a super gratifying reward system. Not until late in the game, when resources are scarce does it feel like a grind. The platforming is tight and I was suprised at the many great tools and upgrades you get to navigate the world.
May I bought Dragon Boy because of the fantastic art. I heard it was a remake of an old game, but didn't think much of it, buy once I played the game it was obvious. At first I was put off by what little the game tells you and the brutality of the lack of checkpoints. I eventually got the hang of it and began to enjoy exploring the unconventional early Metroidvania world. The character transforms into several creatures that have specific abilities that lock other forms out of certain arms of the world. This may have ultimately screwed me over because I couldn't access the transform room at any time. Thankfully cash earned persists through death. Saving up for the next upgrade motivated me through some tough, long grinds. Enemies have unusual paths and behaviors. They are erratic and difficult to predict. The feeling of getting better as I repeatedly tackled a path and progressively got better at mastering each challenge was satisfying initially. I spent hours and thought I mastered an area, surely the boss was near by. I never found that boss. I could only take so much and put it down.