In somewhat of the same spirit as last year, I'd like to discuss some games that I've been playing so far and sort of review over how the year has been for gaming (Hint: its fantastic). As per last year I wont be covering every single game I've truly played since I don't have a photographic memory, nor is everything worth praise, but I'll also avoid restricting this to perfect 2016 releases since this isn't any GOTY type list. Though for reference, you can check out the opinions I have here with whatever relevance it has on my hype list for the year. Oh and there's no order to this system. That said, lets move on, and prepare for another monstrous list that took either multiple days or ridiculous stretches of a couple wasted sittings to complete...
EDF: 2025
Extra discussion here: Now playing article
So this is a game about mindlessly shooting giant bugs with mindlessly awesome guns in PS2 era tech while promising yourself that the amount on screen somehow justifies the poor conditions. It really doesn't, but things still work well enough to get the job done if that job is "stupid fun". Basically its so mindless that Serious Sam would be kicked out for trying to instigate a philosophical revolution. However its fun given the right attitude, and just the right moment for escapism. I had a good time with this, and I have no doubt I'll return or even buy a new game in the franchise at the right price. However its not really something worth getting all loyal about, or sticking around to. I dropped it and moved on when the time was right, but don't regret any time spent squashing insects with super weapons.
Cabela's African Adventures
Now that its been played and in my possession... well its just what it says on the tin. Crappy story attempt though, way worse than I originally imagined. Likewise some of the limitations and weird inner workings of the game logic are a bit shattering. This isn't exactly Alpha Prime levels of awesome cheese, because at least I could be immersed there. Here... no, just no. Still I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy some stuff. I turned on the game at least 4 or 5 times, and I played away at each sitting for more than 30 minutes, so I guess it was doing something right. It was kind of fun to see what happened next, as well as just challenging myself to look for more out of a game with so little. I'll probably go back to it eventually, but for now its been off my PS4 to keep space for way better games.... because, believe it or not I do in fact still have good taste in some gaming.
Firewatch
Oh goody, now we're going from dumb fun to pretentious maybe not fun. Nah, in all seriousness this was a good game, I just wish I paid less for it. I decided to gamble on it at launch, and it was kind of fun. I liked the adventure it held, even if the ending was sort of "meh". I liked the dialogue, the choices, the tension in the mystery, the different events and the way you saw the same place evolve with it, and I love the art style. Again I didn't care for the ending, and then there was all the PS4 related bugs including 2 freeze crashes. Still it was fun, and my sister loved the game as well.
Thief
Not a new game to be playing, but this is one I just officially bought as of this year. I played the PS3 version back on rent long ago, and it was fun enough. However I didn't quite get where it fit in the grand scheme of things. I chalked it up to mediocre and mainstream design vs something created out of heart like Dishonored and MGS, but I wasn't entirely satisfied with that answer. Well upon playing the PS4 side some this year, I accidentally stumbled into a conclusion: this game is about its title, and that alone determines if its for you. This is Thief, about thieving, and if you have the mood to escape into a world encouraging and rewarding some kleptomania, then this is the best. Its not as good with mechanical observations, perfecting your sneaking, or world building like a nice stealth game, but it is good at every little detail of snatching stuff up. Every careful crafted animation of pulling drawers open bit by bit for loose coin, reaching in and snagging something, dodging eye contact from dim lights as you work a safe code open, and seeing the little glimmer of something off to the side from the corner of your eye. This game glorifies theft, and that's kind of cool in my book since I feel at home with tricksters in thieves as far as fiction goes. Its not as awesome or memorable of a game as Dishonored, but its a good fix for the right niche and weird craving of a thief's fantasy. ...yet ironically this is the first real game I probably have on this list.
Broforce
Ugh, talk about a throw-away game. Broforce is a special and unique case of awesome, but then it shows up short handed in a way that makes itself practically useless for a person like me. Maybe if you're into co-op or multiplayer its fun for a little longer, but as an adventure you take one insane trip through. Its full of complete chaos, explosions, blood, humorous jabs at stereotypical masculine awesomeness, and things take an awesome twist with aliens and satan taking over the world. However you can only play it level by level, and then once it ends that's it. It ends. You can't play any level, there's no map maker on console, and the game is even slightly broken (at least at the time of playing). Glad it was free as a + title, but still it kind of sucks that it couldn't amount to its full potential because of poor and intentional outdated design choices. ...oh who am I kidding, Ubisoft has been bringing it back into style with one slot campaigns. Either way broforce was a fantastic game to play that ended in an experience I'll never play again in the near future, nor one that has a lot of incentive to go back to a game where I'll have to repeat everything.
Enter The Gungeon
Enter The Gungeon is definitely this year's indie surprise as far as I'm concerned. Told by nobody about this before-hand, I just kind of saw it sitting there in the "launch party" and was fascinated by it. The satiracle beholder monster, the art aesthetic that just had a charm about it, and the quirky concept of a dungeon full of guns. Oh and the "gun that can kill the past" also helped to sell me on something I didn't know I wanted. As it released, people then began to flock over it and whisper about how it could even be an Isaac killer. But I didn't like Isaac. Still, I pondered it, and... bought it. Then I played it and loved it so much, that to a certainly degree it even overshadowed R&C at points. I really loved it. Something about the art style, the energy, the challenge, and the tiny little innovations like teleporters, all combined to make a game that was pretty awesome as far as rogue-lites go. Nothing ground-breaking or eternally amazing, but such great fun regardless. I really enjoyed my time with this game way more than I should have.
Crimsonland
Probably the game I played longest ago on a new list, but with good reason. This game practically taught me what a "perk" in game terms was, far before people learned it the Call of Duty way. Crimsonland was a game I downloaded on PC as a trial demo back when I was at least in middle school, possibly sooner. It was at a time where Steam wasn't super everywhere, and you still had game downloads running within their own clients, and entire ones dedicated to shoving more trials and demos in your face while timing you on 60 minutes of play or whatever. It let me play a survival mode of an isometric shooter that, at the time, just blew my mind. You painted this massive wasteland red with staying blood and corpses, you got new random and wicked items spawning in or power-ups constantly, and it was just fantastic.
Fast-forward to now, and its pretty much a barebones isometric shooter with a nifty gambling system in place of its survival, and it reminds me of just how it kind of sucks to be older. I still think there's a weird balance at play here that makes the game more fun than it should be technically, but its still nothing super fancy like my younger self thought. I'm not creatively looking to paint the battlefield, nor is the perk system anything extraordinary, but hey at the end of the day this is just the perfect game to chill out and shoot stuff with. I also love its touch pad integration on PS4, and its portability on the Vita. Glad a timed trial demo from like 7 years ago finally paid off to a $3 HD remaster version on consoles.
Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare 2
Galak-Z
Now this is a weird case, I suppose almost the opposite of Gungeon. While Gungeon was an amazingly fun game where it shouldn't have been because of its rogue-lite-ness, Galak-Z was an insanely fun game for the gameplay sake, but had the idiotic idea to build it all behind rogue-lite elements because... its trendy? No really, I can't figure out why the hell this game was a rogue-lite, its far too good of a game at just its core for that garbage. They even went and fixed in a new mode that removes perma-death, but that's not even the full problem. Its still designed in a way that your upgrades, earnings, and whatnot all mean squat in the grand scheme of things, and that you start out weak and fragile in a level structure that resets itself every 5 sessions, and level design that can't figure out if its too simplistic or complciated. It feels like all the bad design choices were out of the rogue area, and all the good ones are from it just being a fun game to play. Its sad to say it, but in the end the presentation got the better of me and I just don't deal with this game much because of its poor set-up. I'd rather be playing games that actually mean something a little more, or games that at least have a better standing as a casual fix. This has niether. It has amazing top-down combat, fantastic physics, fun voice acting and story presentation, and a great mech idea, but... everything else is weighing it down because "derp, indies are supposed to be rogue-lite I guess".
Ratchet & Clank (remake)
Heck yeah, this game was.... fun. Yeah admittedly I don't have a lot else to say on that front. Its a great game, really. The R&C original adventure was well remade in the places where it mattered, Most levels were carefully recreated, the newer mechanics made the game way better than the original, and then there was some crazy amount of particle effects, enemy count, and graphics on a scale that can only be described as PS4 powered chaos. It was all pretty great, but it failed on one major front: the story. When you're retelling the story, and are trying to open a new audience to the awesome franchise, and even take the extra care to give some nods over to long time fans, the last thing you want to do is to skip out on the story so badly that it requires the movie, and sits as the worst portrayal of the duo being a duo since... well, ever. No really, this is the least convincing friendship I've ever seen out of these two, and that even includes Deadlock/gladiator and Crack in time where they weren't both even on the screen together most of the time. The story was sloppy, rushed, and poorly put together with the movie, and on top of that it does absolutely nothing to address future plots or the countless potentials that open up with starting their adventures over again. As for gameplay its all great for the most part, but it doesn't do anything to blow my mind on the series and even feels about an hour shorter, and is missing the arena mode that makes for some awesome parts of any R&C adventure. Nothing ground heart breaking, but it does definitely explain why I haven't bothered to complete challenge mode yet.
Back on my hype list I said this game could easily be the best thing of the whole year, and I did mean that, but I was talking about the "if" it hit every box with precision and awesomeness. Here it flopped on the story to the adventure, and stuck to the old classic's lack of an arena, and I guess in the grand scheme of things I can already say for sure its not GOTY material. Its awesome, its fun, and I recomend its purchase at $40 or under without any question, but its not GOTY. Its just another awesome R&C game, with a less than awesome story and the wasted potential that comes with that down fall. Oh but the movie was pretty great as well in my opinion, so go see that as well... even if not a whole lot of people agree with me due to some weird double standards (it has the same style of the game, but apparently it doesn't work for a movie without being "childish").
Stories: The path of Destinies
Played honestly about the same time as R&C. I kind of wanted to talk about it in its own, but I didn't find the time... which is kind of good, because that means I was playing more than writing about it. Still this was a fairly different kind of game. It started out slow and boring, but the combat quickly built up, the stories were great, and it was just a fun and witty adventure to go on. I loved the story choices, enjoyed finding my way to the "right" ending. Though in the end I also found it to be incredibly repetitive. The one downfall, and it is quite a big one, is definitely how many times you'll be redoing the levels (especially on the right path). Great game, cast, plot, general idea, and even a fairly fun combat system that catches on, but the gameplay doesn't carry the absurd amount of repetition the level set-up has in store. That being said I'll happily play it some more later down the line, and probably come back yet again after I tire of the 2nd run. There's so many potential endings and stories left still unturned, and its probably all worth getting to at some point.
Turok (Remaster)
Oh yes! Expect an upcoming article on this game sometime in the future, because Turok is a weird franchise that somehow has so little to do with my active gaming, yet is a big influence on it regardless. Furthermore its just quite unique and yet sadly forgotten, and I feel like an article aught to come out on what it does right and unique, or how I think it should influence the genre. For now though I'll note how awesome it was that this remaster was actually on sale at the same time I got my access to PC's gaming market back, and I did not hesitate to grab this.
Anyway getting to play this was a fun experience back onto the PC market. The various options to enhance this old game were pretty great, though I volunteered to keep the fog high for atmosphere.
Then coming to the gameplay, it works in a weird way where collect-o-thon style tactics are secretly taking place over shooting. Shooting is certainly still important here, and you'll need to carefully manage ammo, deal with a variety of enemies, and even shoot them down more than once if you hang around their spawn points for another round, but ultimately the weird catch with this game is just how good you are at getting secrets, pick-ups, and keys. An entire weapon revolves around your ability to pick up the parts to building it, and this predates R&C by years. However this is also sort of its curse, because sometimes its just damn annoying to be stuck on a huge semi-maze type level looking for some slightly obscure key just to progress the game. Meanwhile enemies never stay down for good, but sometimes the ammo you used doesn't respawn as fast as you like, so it almost becomes survival horror with the aesthetics of some wonky rail shooter. Its a weird game, but pretty fun still. I'm really glad they brought it back into the spotlight, and I look forward to Turok 2 and the console ports that are coming up eventually.
Dark Souls 3
What can be said about this franchise that hasn't already been said? It certainly applies to this game, and maybe then some. Okay know what, just have this GIF
Dark Souls 3 is a fantastic. It sadly feels somewhat more linear than past games, but it isn't bad enough that it gets in the way. I've had such a crazy adventure that I just love this game, even as incomplete (as usual) as my trip is. I've been lost in a way that actually helped me progress big time, and lead to such an ironic twist that it paid off in a big cartoony sort of way, I battled awesome looking creatures and mutation, came to wonder once again about this mystical world, and I just love all the new balancing systems in place.... well, except the lack of armor upgrades, but I can live with that. The game is just great, and so far is one of the best I've played this year. I hope I can actually come back and beat the dancer where I'm stuck, but even if I didn't, I've had a great time so far.
Table Top Racing: World Tour
Right before I got Doom, I decided to sample one of the simpler newer PS+ games at the moment, and that was this game. ...I was disappointed to keep it simple. I thought this would be one of those fun arcadey medal chasing racers, and it was set up with that premise. Silly looking toy cars, funky weird music, and the same exact level set-up. However the actual control of the cars, the car variety, the challenge factor all sucked. So did the music, which became quickly obnoxious. Challenge races pretty much took even more freedom out of the player's hands, and then on top of that I'll state I don't actually like the level set-up of these racers, I just usually like how care-free and silly they are... and this one just doesn't hold that tone well enough among its awful gameplay. I quickly deleted this game, and I can't see myself coming back. On the other hand, I do wish to still play Tropico 5 pretty soon.
Doom 4
I loved this game, I still do, and I'm just going to say that going forward right now its currently my favorite game of this whole year. Its probably going to be that way, since I love FPS games a lot, and this is also one of the best FPS games I've ever played. The mechanical focused is tuned to the point of mastery, the gameplay holds a lot of variety and diverse extras within complex and varied levels, a good length, and the gunplay is very satisfying. Everything is fast, fluid, and packs a punch. Meanwhile the music is tuned perfectly with what's going on, there's a story to be told for those that want it, and each difficulty is worth giving a try. If that's not enough, there's a competitive multiplayer worth some casual arena-lite fun, and just when you think you might be getting somewhat bored there's a constantly updating snapmap system for building your own stuff, and trying out others. Some of what others have made is quite incredible, with everything from normal and fun FPS corridor levels, to actual arcade runners, and even a freakin' harvest moon clone. Its amazing what people can make, and it all passes through so fluidly and naturally whenever you need a small break from the phenomenal campaign. The only thing I can imagine beating it is something that breaks from the norm in such an amazing and revolutionary, and well polished way, that it just bends my mind in sheer undoubted bliss. Unless that happens, Doom sits here as something so fantastic and amazing that it is currently one of my new all time favorites in gaming, and I love it.
Uncharted 4
For starters, I'll note this was a rental, and I did not complete the campaign in a game that has all of its enthusiasm behind the story and campaign. This was a weird mixed bag of fun. I really enjoy the franchise as my personal favorite from Naughty Dog, though that doesn't mean as much to me as it does from some others. Basically the game starts off really slow, disjointed, and disorganized. It takes like 3-4 flashbacks and disjointed scene and year leaping to actually set up the basics of its own story, destroys a past story, and then the gameplay is chugging along at the same disorganized and slow snail pace. Actually I would almost want them to remove gameplay just to get the game to actually freakin' move along to the point where it got good. It wasn't until chapter 7, scottland, that the game got to where Chapter 3 in Uncharted 2 was in both terms of story and gameplay set-up, and that is a lot of wasted time to set up a potentially great game. Along the way I've also got to confess I wasn't dropping my jaw over their hyped graphics. It just wasn't anything so impressive, and that was coming off of 60FPS Doom. That's not to say it looked bad, it was more than serviceable, but we're just beyond that point of jaw-dropping stuff, and that's kind of why I'm so disappointed with shit like the PS4.5 where they think edging the graphics up a tad bit is worth all the risks, costs, and hassles associated with it.
That being said, once things got going and finally caught up to Uncharted 2's standards, they were really good. I really enjoyed the combat, the stealth system that is actually legit stealth for once, the sliding and grappling to diversify the platforming a bit more, and then there's just some really fantastic moments like the jeep journey, or simply playing Crash Bandicoot with Drake talking over it. The story still has a lot of character driven charm, and fun things in store, and when things finally get into the gameplay loop you expect of the series, it delivers on them well enough to be fun. Its not a game worth fighting review scores over like some idiots are doing, but it still is a fun game, and I wouldn't be surprised if it deserves the praise its getting as a good finale to the franchise.
Stanley Parable
This is a weird little game about being a weird little game. Stanely Parable is something I've been wanting to play since its release, but I waited on a sale because I rarely just burn money on these narrative driven adventures (See: wish firewatch was cheaper). Suddenly it showed up for $3, which is definitely within my interest, and any cheaper would make me feel wrong. Now here I am, and... I'm not sure if this is everything I expected, or if its more or less. On one hand it feels like I'm finding some endings, and story pieces that are just really underwhelming. Then the level of interactivity is just kind of... well, minimal, leaving me feeling like the game was even more shallow than I expected it. On the other hand some endings, and some of the satisfying ways in which the game is set to break itself, are so awesome that it makes up for the lamer bits. The game almost winds up becoming about finding all the endings, and seeing how far you can push the game's minimalistic abilities. Its pretty crazy. I think my favorite ending has got to be the one in which the narrator himself becomes lost with you, and attempts to use all sorts of scatter-brained sillyness to try and put the game back together (like that adventure line in the screenshot).
Valkria Chronicles (Remaster)
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