by mento
2016! I've played some video games in that year. These are them.
This is like the sixth or seventh List of Games Beaten now. Here's hoping I beat 2015's meager record - I'm intending to play a lot of smaller games this year, just as soon as I'm done with all the giant games of last year.
Showing 1-10 of 54 items
13/01. I've said it elsewhere, but Bethesda packs just enough appreciable new hooks and streamlined mechanics into each successive open-world RPG of theirs that you get suckered into spending literal weeks of your life with them every time. If I could use an inelegant analogy here, and I've never been afraid to do so before now, it's like passing by a delicious apple pie sitting on a suspicious tarp a la that one episode of The Simpsons. You fall into the barely-concealed giant pit trying to grab it, sitting at the bottom for days until you finally claw your way out. A few years later, you walk past another tarp but this one has apple pie with a dollop of ice cream next to it. "This is the same pit trap again, isn't it?" you muse, "It's even in the same place and everything. Like every detail is the same, I'm almost insulted at their lack of effort. That ice cream, though..." WHOMP. Screw you Fallout 4. (The game's fine! It's fine! I enjoyed my time with it immensely.) (4 Stars.)
16/01. For as bloated as it was and for some of its issues with repetitive level design and lengthy loading times (at least for me, and it's almost certainly less of an issue for the 3DS version), Citizens of Earth is an exceptionally made Indie RPG from folk who know the genre back to front. It's not enough that they built their game by duct-taping together Suikoden and EarthBound - two incredible RPG series from which we'll probably never see another sequel - but they threw in so many extra features and conveniences that it felt like it was a dream project made by RPG fanatics who had, more than once in the past, uttered "this RPG would be perfect if it let you do this, or skip that, or speed up this part". I appreciated the heck out of this little game. (And you can read more about it by checking out its three Go! Go! GOTY! entries. Sorry I couldn't beat you in 2015, guy!) (4 Stars.)
28/01. This might be the last Assassin's Creed game I touch for a while. Even with its rave reviews, it suffers the same gameplay issues, glitches and design problems that the series has been struggling with for multiple entries now, focused as they are on open-world content bloat and ignoring an increasingly hoary gameplay engine that won't see any significant improvements if they continue to put out a game every year or so. AC:S is fine - I like the twin protagonists and how they provide two alternative builds to choose from, the well-realized Victorian setting and the myriad historical cameos - but as with Black Flag it's becoming clear that I won't ever be as invested in this series as I once was. (3 Stars.)
20/02. Bloodborne's very impressive, not just in how it leaves the safe environs of a vaguely Berserk-style fantasy medieval kingdom for something that crosses Universal Horror with Lovecraft in a slightly more contemporary setting, but its many ingenious tweaks to the series gameplay that, for better or worse, make it a game where an aggressive all-out approach is generally the best strategy. I'm excited to see where else the Souls formula might be taken in the future. (5 Stars.)
05/03. I wasn't sure what to expect with this "gaiden" entry in the venerable Ys series of action-RPGs, beyond that it used the same engine and mechanics as the PS2's Ys VI: Ark of Napishtim, but I was pleasantly surprised by how succinctly it condenses and epitomizes what makes the Ys series great: thrilling boss battles, a lively mix of brawler/platformer/action-RPG gameplay and a kickass soundtrack. This might actually be the ideal gateway for someone trying to get into Ys, in spite of its lack of Adol Christin and how heavily steeped it is in the lore of Ys games past. (5 Stars.)
14/03. A number of technical and game design issues might have soured my Tearaway experience - I really can't say it's a particularly good 3D platformer - but there's lots still to appreciate about the game's creativity, papercraft aesthetic and willingness to get weird with its meta tale about the player and their influence on the in-game world. I've used a metaphor similar to this before when describing the game, but it's like an artsy coffee place with a fantastic atmosphere but truly abysmal coffee: it might fail to deliver what it was ostensibly created to provide, but you get the sense that maybe the proprietors' priorities were elsewhere. (3 Stars.)
17/03. A cute game with a cute backstory, but not a whole lot of substance. It is kinda neat that someone made a Flash-based Zelda 2 clone though. Usually it's the other Zeldas that get the imitation treatment. (3 Stars.)
21/03. Case in point. Oceanhorn is nakedly a Wind Waker tribute (like that's a bad idea) with some slightly more old-school approaches to dungeon and world design - though I did like that XP rewards were heavily influenced on the in-game achievement system. It makes a lot of sense, to an extent where I wonder why more games haven't done something similar. (4 Stars.)
27/03. A game that really doesn't wear out its welcome, exploring the limits of its fractured world design before bowing out gracefully. I didn't appreciate its "beat the world without dying" approach to 100% completion, but it's the sort of novel little puzzle-platformer the Indie market does so well, if all too frequently. (4 Stars.)
28/03. I've been on-off playing this F2P Picross game for months, finally reaching the ending though not entirely done with acquiring new Pokemon. Actually, it's the Alternate World with its much harsher victory conditions that will keep me going for a bit longer. At least I don't have to worry about waiting six real-time hours for my energy to regenerate. Damn F2P mechanics. (4 Stars.)
