by d_w
This is a list of games I've in 2014, when I played them, and what I thought at the time. Mostly so I remember what I've played! Thought it might be an interesting experiment. This is essentially a big blog that I'll update after playing a game.
KEEP IN MIND THAT THESE COMMENTS ARE UNEDITED AND FULL OF TYPOS/SPELLING ERRORS. They were meant mainly a quick summery for my future self.
A bit on the formatting:
Date. Time of day. Platform.
Description of session.
The Date will specify whether I started, played, or finished a game.
The Time of Day is a general time when I played the game. I use describers such as "Early Morning" (Midnight to 6am), "Morning"(6am to about 10am), "Late Morning"(10am to noon), "Afternoon"(noon to 6pm), "Evening"(6pm to 10pm), and "Late Evening"(10pm to midnight.)
Platform is what system/console I played the game on. I'm guessing nearly all games will be on PC.
The Description of the session will vary. Sometimes it'll be my thoughts on the game, a literal description of what I did, a description of why I'm playing that particular game, what I'm doing before/during the session (listening to a podcast, etc) , and will most likely be a combination. These descriptions may include spoilers, especially when I get farther into a game. I ask if you do comment about something spoiler-ish I mentioned then please use spoiler tags.
At the end of the year I'm going to compile the data and create some nifty charts. Again mostly from my own curiosity, but maybe it might prove interesting to others.
Showing 1-10 of 100 items
Started on New Years Eve into New Years. PC. Encountered some odd bugs where frozen character models would spawn in the house. I could clip through them and they didn't prevent me from moving on, so they mainly just made me laugh. Still found the rest of the game to be pretty much alright. ~~~~~~~~~~~ Played on Mar 17th over Midnight to Mar 18th. I really enjoyed this chapter. Some bits were fairly obvious and I'm not too kine on the new characters yet, but it was still pretty great. I encountered a lot less bugs than the first chapter. ~~~~~~~~~~~ Played Aug 30th. Early Morning. I wanted to play this now that all the episode are out but when I booted up the game my save files from the other two episodes was gone. I played a bit through the first episode again and decided to stop one I got to the shed. It's annoying, but I'll probably play through both other episodes today. I wanted to completed today, but I don't know if I will. ~~~~~~~~~~
Started on Jan 3rd. Early Morning. PC. Enjoyed what I played. May come back to it. ~~~~~~~~~~~ Played on Jan 8th. Early Morning. Got further. Many of the levels are fairly cleverly designed, but some seem to have rather odd solutions. I'm not sure if I got through them the way they were intended. Also the game doesn't have Menu Wrap which is bullshit. How can you make a game today that doesn't have Menu Wrap? ~~~~~~~~~~~ Played on Feb 4th. Morning. After playing through the Candy Jam Escape Goat game I decided to go back to this one. Got to the point where I cannot figure out any of the three levels that are available to me. Any solutions seem way to tricky to be the actual solutions. Still enjoy the game though. Don't know if I'll come back to it.
Played on Jan 3rd. Evening. PC. I wanted to check up on episodes of James Urbaniak's Fake Podcast show and figured this was the perfect game for the job. ~~~~~~~~~~~
Started on Jan 5th. Early Morning. PC. Found the gamepad camera controls to be overly sensitive. Perhaps its my controller. I use a PS2 to 360 converter for my PC gamepad. I liked the art and music of the game. The gameplay was alright. I might come back to it. ~~~~~~~~~~~ Played on Jan 8th. Early Morning. Played some more this. Liked the story set up and acting (aside from little girl character.) Found the platforming to not be precise enough to really be enjoyable. Probably won't play anymore of it. A shame.
Played on Jan 6th to Jan 7th. Evening into Early Morning. PC. My internet was acting up while I was trying to watch Awesome Games Done Quick so I decided to play this game and basically savescum through it until my internet stabilized. I kind of lost myself in it and played it for many hours. Eventually I got to the part I always die at and died. So I looked up a guide (by now the internet was fine), and played through it to completion. It wasn't as fun as trying to do it blind, but I still enjoy this game a lot and will probably play through it more. ~~~~~~~~~~~ Played on Jan 14th. Early Morning. Decided to try again at getting through the game. Accidentally misread which mood gives a bonus to Royal Demeanor and messed up my whole run. Stopped after the ball. Might go back and reload one of my older saves to fix it. ~~~~~~~~~~~
Played on Jan 8th. Morning. PC. Again my internet was barely functional. Apparently Comcast is the only option here in Seattle and it's been awful. So I decided to play something I must have bought on some sale. Perfection is alright. It didn't hold my attention for longer than 10 minutes though. Probably won't play anymore of it. Nice music and sound design though.
Played on Jan 10th. Early Morning. PC. Once again my internet wasn't working well and I decided to play something. I've played a lot of BoI, but am not very good at it. Had a couple runs while listening to Sketches of Spain by Miles Davis. ~~~~~~~~ Played on Mar 11th. Evening. Patrick's series got me interested in this game again. I'm still not very good at it. ~~~~~~~~ Played on Mar 13th. Evening. Tried to do challenge 6 and failed. ~~~~~~~~ Played on Mar 14th. Early Morning. Beat Challenge 6 by exploiting the bug with the black pony item where you can make yourself invincible by using the item then using the mouse to shoot. Tried to play the First Challenge and got to Mom, but accidentally used all my items before her and lost. ~~~~~~~~~ Played on Mar 14th. Evening. Tried Challenge 7 and died at Mom. A bit later I tried Challenge 1 and failed. ~~~~~~~~~ Played on Mar 15th. Late Evening. Tried Challenge 7 and failed.
Played on Jan 12th. Early Morning. PC. Gunpoint was #3 on my GOTY list for 2013. I decided in December that I wanted to do a Let's Play for it and found some time to record it on this day. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Played on Jan 13th. Evening. Recorded some more for my LP. I want to record the whole game before editing the footage/recording commentary. I am about half way through now I think. I've been having too much fun replaying missions to do things differently. Discovered something new! I didn't know you could crush a guard under a vault door. It's actually pretty gruesome. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Played on Jan 23rd. Evening. Recorded more for my LP. Finished the game, however I thought I could go back and make the decision of who to side with differently from the mission select menu to see the other dialogue options. You can't. So, to do the LP right, and show has much of the dialogue as I can I'll have to play through the whole game again to get that point. It'll be much quicker and I was planning to show off other ways missions can be done and how conversations can go differently. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Played on Jan 13th. Morning. PC. Picked up this game as soon as it was available. Really enjoyed what I played of the single player. Don't quite understand all the subtlety yet. I wish the game had a more fleshed out How To Play. As of writing this all it seems to do is say "Move left to right to run" or something like that then exits. Not very helpful! The colors on the cloud stage were a bit much too. I found it hard to see where my character was. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Played Feb 16th. Evening. The Internet has be down for 24 hours. Fucking Comcast! Played more of the single player of Nidhogg. I got pretty far, but I don't know about the contorls. The game doesn't really communicate things very well. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Played on Mar 29th. Evening. Went to a get-together of Seattle game dev folks. I wreck fools in this game. Though it was their first time playing. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Played on Apr 4th. Evening. There was another meet up for Seattle developers/other folk. Played this game a lot and won maybe once. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Played on May 10th. Evening. Went to LoadingReadyRun Con and took 2nd at a tournament. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Started on Jan 14th. Late Morning. PC. Played this about 90 minutes of this. Got to Chapter 2. Spent a lot of time looking at the Kickstarter banners (I chose the crow with the eye in the center) and reading the lore on the world map. ~~~~~~~~~~~ Played on Jan 15th. Early Morning. Now somewhere in Chapter 3. I wasn't expecting there to be so much story, but I really like the story so far. I wish the combat had an undo button though. I find myself occasionally moving to a tile by mistake. ~~~~~~~~~~~ Played on Jan 15th. Morning. Further into Chapter 3. Made a choice at a village that was a minor regret. Caused one of my best fighters to leave my party. It's OK as he was replaced before the next battle, but now my team is mostly Varl and it has made my team a lot less maneuverable in battle. ~~~~~~~~~~~ Played on Jan 16th. Early Morning. Got to Chapter 5 and stopped before clicking through any dialogue. That's quite the big snake. I'm starting to notice some faults of the game. The loading times tend to be a bit long (5~10+ seconds) and there are times when you're not doing much other than watching you guys march across the screen. Those are both pretty minor. I'm really liking the way the story is going. I'm not sure how much my choices are actually affecting it, but so far it has flowed pretty well. There's a bit of ludonarrative dissonance within my one party. The character Rook has a daughter who is sort of shy, passive, and non-aggressive. However in combat, she's my best fighter and often gets the majority of kills and has been the last one alive multiple times. Right now I have her equipped with an item that increases the amount of armor damage by 3 and she's just been wrecking fools' armor from behind my more beefy characters. It's kind of awesome. Her special ability is super strong too. ~~~~~~~~~~~ Played on Jan 16th. Noon. Played more through Chapter 5 until I encountered a bug and had to close the game. ~~~~~~~~~~~ Played on Jan 16th. Evening. Oh man. So much happened. I'm in Chapter 6 now and going on a long, mostly disastrous march south. There's been thieves, betrayals, character deaths, etc. It's been pretty intense. Rook's daughter has still proven to be the best character in battle. Funny thing, there was a cut scene where she killed someone and was trembling with shock, but she has the highest kill count of anyone in my party. Something like 28 or 30. Rook is the next highest with 24 or so. Other than that, I think the UI and usability could use so work. I would love to be able to upgrade and equip my characters right before a battle, or be able to jump to the character screen without having to set up camp. Despite those criticisms I'm really enjoying this game. ~~~~~~~~~~~ Played on Jan 17th. Afternoon. Now in Chapter 7. Was having a real hard time keeping my band alive and feed, but a fortunate point in the story saved me. Got up to a boss. Perhaps the final boss. It feels like things are coming to end, but there's still a lot left to uncover. Sufficed to say the boss wrecked me pretty thoroughly. Some of my best guys were unavailable due to injury. Ah well I'll give another crack at it later. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Finished on Jan 21th. Evening. I didn't play anything all weekend because I was doing work on a couple of game projects. One is this game called "Witchmarsh." The other is this dumb little game I'll doing for fun. Anyway. so I was literally at the final battle last time I played. Aletta (Rook's daughter) died in my ending. I don't know if there's a to have her shoot the arrow and survive or if there are different endings, but ah well. I really enjoyed this game and will probably play through it again some time. It's clear they want to do a squeal or expansion or something and that's fine with me. The world and characters are interesting and unique. I want to know more about them. I certainly agree with people that this is an early GotY container and hopefully it won't be forgotten. ~~~~~~~~~~~~