by sam_lfcfan
A running tally of every game I've played for the first time in The Year of Our Lord, 2018:
Showing 1-10 of 22 items
Bought this during a PSN flash sale. I'm all for games getting more opaque and weird with their storytelling, but this game didn't quite come together for me. Certainly had its moments, but the story was missing some emotional hook to get me invested in what was happening. The process you have to go through to get the "true ending" is insane and hostile in a way that I can't help but respect. Worth playing if you haven't.
This game makes my head hurt, my eyes strain, and my nerves twist into several, increasingly ornate knots. I love it.
Another one from a PSN sale. You remember that time you went to set off fireworks on Fourth of July and the pack didn't go off for some reason and you got really bummed out that your excitement and expectations went unsatisfied? That sucked, right? The beginning of this game is like that, but worse. Birthday balloons popped prematurely. The wettest of wet blankets. A porn video buffering for eternity. The first hour of this game is all slow talking and a tutorial that holds your hand for far too long, far too tightly. My already middling interest in playing this game was sapped in record time. I know the game is very short, but it’s unlikely that I'll see the rest of it.
I still feel like Horizon got slept on at the end of last year because it came out so early in the year. The Frozen Wilds DLC was more of the same from Horizon, but that's perfectly fine by me. The new winter environment is gorgeous; The animation of Aloy trudging through the snow is spot-on. Same goes for her constantly shivering in the cold whenever leave her idle for a couple seconds. But it's the writing and world-building that made Horizon so surprising. The characters you encounter in this DLC aren't quite as self-serious as the people in the base game. Shout out to the amateur archaeologist Enjak. The moments of levity also make the more somber moments hit stronger. I wouldn't want to spoil it for those who haven't played it yet (as if anyone else will read this lol) so i'll leave it at this: Long Live Concrete Beach Party.
I wish I liked the movement more so I could see how abstract and weird the art style gets. Every step feels over-extravagant and sluggish, which I guess makes sense given that the game is about a traumatic childhood of a ballet dancer.
How wild is it that the people who made the Serious Sam games also made this creepy Tetris variant? The gameplay is pretty standard puzzle game far, but the atmosphere and philosophical bent to the story are what make it stand out. The world is so austere and quiet that I couldn't play much of the game in one sitting before I started getting anxious. The one jump scare in the game actually made me repel back into the couch like I was launched out of a cannon. Overstays its welcome by a couple hours, but still worth the time.
Holy shit I love this game. The bar for narratives in games is low, but I couldn't get enough of Possum Springs or its people. The writing reminded me of Lady Bird in the way that support characters got way more empathy and focus on their stories than were really necessary. Every encounter left me wishing I had more time with Mae's crew. Pretty sure I'm gonna end up with an Angus tattoo one of these days. I love him. I didn't love the supernatural elements - the plot would've worked without them - but they fit in with the game's overall theme. Night in the Woods did a better job at exploring the economic anxiety of a small American town than any of those New York Times pieces about people who voted for a certain fascist Cheeto. And they did in a game where you, a teenage cat, get into an emotionally complex knife fight with your friend, a manic depressive fox. What a gem.
I was content to never see Kratos again after God of War 3, but respect to Cory Barlog for finding a way to make this eternally angry man interesting again. I thought the story was overrated in terms of its novelty - a gruff, heavily bearded man learning to be a parent is pretty cliche - but the performances from Kratos and the kid elevated the material into something meaningful. The Freya turn to villainy at the end of the game was awful though. That shit was trash. The rest of the game is pretty unimpeachable. It's probably the best-looking game I've ever played. It was easy to see why my launch PS4 sounded like a miniature wind tunnel for the duration of the game. Great photo mode too! I was shocked at how much I enjoyed exploring in God of War considering that's never been part of this franchise before. Finding new loot was fun, the side missions were varied and interesting, and the combat had enough depth that boredom was never an issue. Reinventions this drastic usually don't take this well.
The trajectory of Fortnite has been incredible on both a micro and macro level. It’s fitting that the biggest game of 2018 was borne from brazen capitalism; Epic’s lane switch after PUBG blew up was so sudden that PlayerUnknown actually tried to take them to court over it. That was more a hissy fit than a lawsuit, but you can understand why they were pissed. It’s got to be annoying when a publisher who provided the engine for your game turn their niche building game into a worldwide phenomenon that brings Drake into its orbit, earns a tribute from 03 Greedo, and makes an increasingly absurd amount of money. It was a craze that seemed set to pass me by. Or so I thought. See, I played the PS4 version of Fortnite just as the hype started getting crazy and had a horrible time with it. The building controls seemed clunky and it took me dozens of games before I got my first kill. It felt safe to assume this game just wasn’t for me in the same way Minecraft wasn’t for me. Then I gave the Switch version of the game a try after E3 ended and now I love it? Everything about the movement and the shooting immediately made more sense. I won a solo game in the first week, and after that I was hooked. Has replaced Splatoon 2 as my go to Switch game and I’m still surprised by that.
Remember the World Cup? That was so much fun. All the excitement and drama and escapism from our crumbling society. EA's virtual counterpart has very little of the emotion that makes the World Cup such an incredible event. Playing so much of this DLC made me realize that the uniqueness of the World Cup comes from everything outside of the actual games, and that that experience is almost impossible to replicate in games. I had fun with it, but I could always tell what was missing.