2017 so far...

Welp, with the year coming around to sort of a half-way point, I feel there's plenty of games to discuss again. This is sort of my excuse to talk about what I've been playing and feeling without writing an entire Now Playing, even if a few of these games will have such a thing done already. This is about any game I've been playing that feels worth documenting right here. That said, I have to say I haven't played a whole bunch of strong-feeling games that released in this exact year. That's not to say the games have been bad, but a whole lot of them are games that were in some way out earlier, and are still fantastic. I don't know how this is going to come down to GOTY if this keeps up, but I'll figure it out. Maybe I'll have played more like Nier by the time that happens.

Far Cry Primal

Someday, I hope to get back into this game and play it through some more, but yet there's really not a big pull, and from what I can remember... I think I see why. It's a big deconstruction of modern presentation and what we usually know for a Far Cry game, and yet an amplification of what we do know as an Ubisoft "sandbox" game. Far Cry 4 hid it in chaos, great writing, an interesting civil conflict, and just a loud and proud sense of fun as well as new features. Primal... has you reading subtitles to figure out what cavemen do, and there's not really a whole lot beyond fetch quests. Go get this guy, go get that guy, now go hunt this animal to prove yourself "worthy". In-between these incredible (hah!) story concepts, there's an absurd amount of even more blatant activity checklisting going on. Almost everything is divided up into a list, and honestly the funnest part of that was going around to outposts and fighting people. That wound up being the bulky of my gameplay experience, until I just got bored of even that.

Don't get me wrong, Primal isn't a bad game, and has some great ideas in there. I love the new pet taming system, the little bleedout detail with the animals, some of the environments are amazing, and then there's the way you need to work on cold protection and stay close to fires. There's a clever bit of survival details snuck into an otherwise mundane ubisoft game, but ultimately a lot of what makes a mundane ubisoft game so dull and mockable are on loud display. It never tries to even hide it, it's clear even when your pet system is like opening and calling a freakin' inventory complete with grayed out critters you haven't unlocked or leveled up to yet. Everything included the little trees are glowing items to pick up and check off in your inventory, you have a stash system to keep up with, a giant tree that you have to unlock to unlock the unlock tree (seriously), etc. It's just a bunch of busy worked wrapped up in an awesome theme that... they buried under the busy work. This is why people are fed up with your formula Ubisoft.

...oh, yeah, and the melee combat is broke as fuck in a game that's going to be filled with it. How on earth... *sigh*

Uncharted 4

Uncharted 4 is just the best, right guys? No, not really. I think... unless I'm confusing this with another post I did somewhere else, I think I went over the fact that Uncharted 4 doesn't pace itself right for me. I love a lot about it, but it's amplified on Uncharted 2's issue of pacing issues and weird moments. The combat is great, platforming is fine, story is great (especially once you get through the slog of an opening with five or so flashbacks), etc. However it's still not beating Uncharted 2 in just how fun that was. I have to wonder what others are seeing in this to dub it the best thing ever. It has to be the emotional investment and good writing of the story alongside it's presentation. Especially with that ending man, because... dang, it's just the best ending to any franchise I can think of. But yeah, I think it still has people thinking too emotionally, and less critically. That's not a bad thing necessarily (games are meant to be fun, and that's all that counts in the end. So good on ND for making a game people just hypnotically love), but I'm still left scratching my head as to how this was supposed to be one of the best out there. I think as I've gone along, it's been further proven as others come out and celebrate the exclusives Horizon and Bloodborne more in the long run. Those are games with actual... well, more gameplay worthy things going on for them. Uncharted 4 is still pretty fun, and I've enjoyed it. Oh and that ending, holy crap, that ending is still incredible. In the end, I was slogging through this game way more to conclude the good story than I was to truly play a fantastic game. It was a good game, but one I could kind of put away after it was done, and walk away to think of other things.

EDF 4.1

Yeah, keeping this quick and image-less, it's EDF yet again. I had some raw senseless fun, love the new fire effects on this, but hate the stingy weapon system on this go around. I sunk time into tons of levels, played some co-op with my dad later on, and I've had some quick and fun laughs with it. That's really all there is worth reporting. Go kill some bugs, or... eh, don't. I've discussed this in better detail with the Now Playing article on it, go search that up if you want a bigger talk.

Watch Dogs 2

Remember how I said Far Cry Primal was a step backwards in how to present an Ubisoft game? Watch Dogs was okay in doing that sort of thing, able to engage me with a real cool story about vigilante-ism (uh, or whatever the word I'm looking for is), revenge, and a couple subtle gameplay quirks that worked with it. Watch Dogs 2 however steps forward completely, not only giving you a more fun and quirky story worth your time and investment, but tying it in flawlessly with awesome side-quests, your stats, online, and just the world itself. Watch Dogs 2 takes a more goofy and cheesy approach, being compared to the movie Hackers more so than an actual story of hacking. That puts it in a better spot than the association with batman the original had, and it truly feels like a good fit. Every mission had some kind of fun story to it, there are some neat little twists, and yet it surprisingly feels more genuine and realistic with how it perfectly bleeds some real life culture and internet goofs through into the game. There's even a point where you're able to leak an Ubisoft game, which was a real legit preview to some upcoming project. Very clever guys. This is how to spin your formula in a way that truly works. It's not just a checklist, it's a world worth exploring. 

Oh, and the hacking gameplay is so much better as well, with one of the best little things being the fact you can remotely drive other people's cars! It just feels so good to run around and goof with things this time around. Nearly everything is just so fleshed out and fun, that I'm actually doing some of the lesser side-quests like the Uber car rides just as a break from the more legit side-questing... and even they sometimes surprise me with moments of good content, like a daredevil youtuber who asks you to do tricks, or a guy that leads you into a gang turf war. I kind of miss the old character at times, but it's still all so good. I feel a bit guilty for not having finished this yet, because I needed to clear some space and bigger games were coming up at the time. Still I definitely need to get back and play some more.

Gravity Rush 2

Gravity Rush 2 is quite an odd game. In addition to being an open world super hero gravity manipulator collect-o-thon, it also just feels... so much like a Sony + Nintendo collaboration. Something about it is just plain fun for fun's sake, charming, creative, very gamey, and yet so free and feature packed. It's the best of both worlds, and yet... for some reason I'm just not entirely hooked on it. I love it a lot while in the moment, but I kind of need to be in the moment. When I turn the switch off, or swap out another game, suddenly GR2 is just that game I played once upon a time. The story is alright and everything, but nothing about it sticks with me. In the moment, it's fantastic. Out of it, and it doesn't feel like it exists. I don't know what the actual problem or lacking feature is, but it's there. On top of that, I also hate some of the quest goals. A couple of times the game is just plain tedious, like a mission that quite literally has you exhausting your powers through miles of un-broken fetch quest errand running. Yeah... that just sucks guys, no other way about it.

Worms WMD

Worms actually came back. Awesome! This worms game is very well crafted with tons of the good classic features, even some improvements like the amount of on-screen worms you can have, diverse weapons, and even entirely new features like vehicles, crafting, and turrets. Despite it's look on the surface, the new art style really does hardly anything. Every exact movement and actual control is the exact same, giving an artificial feel to the new direction, but everything else is a sign of exactly what the art style evokes: change without forgetting the soul and spirit. There's a lot of new and awesome stuff, with nothing bad missing. Often T17 can't seem to put together a worms game with even their own normal features functioning together, never the less with a successful gimmick. This game is the true successor we get once a blue moon, and it feels good to finally play a great worms game again.

For Honor

For Honor is an amazing game, trapped to shitty and terrible mistakes. It's a living example to the idea that maybe, gameplay isn't all that matters... the thing it's built on does, because publishers can easily make it a bitch to get to that gameplay. I only rented this game, and I loved the time spent with it and the orochi fighter. I enjoyed practicing advanced kills, practicing with bots, figuring out optimized strategies, loved dueling, but then again I also lost 30 minutes of a solo campaign level because someone was fooling around with the same set of hook-ups that had the wi-fi. Why am I losing all that progress to a solo level? Because Ubisoft has fallen into the stupid trap of thinking that for some reason they need to throw their players under a bus, forget how proper saving works, and lost my sale all by their forced and unnatural online only position for the game. Alongside The Division, and word about a big online emphasis on AC, this is why I fear Watch Dogs 2 might be the last good game I get from them. Even though they make amazing games like this, it doesn't matter, I'm out if you don't respect my time and ability to just sit down and play a game. But what about those who do love online? Well fuck you to, because they have their entire system tied to outdated (back even when it launched) P2P type matchmaking that stops your fight and crashes on you if the host has a life and leaves, or the game just has a digital brain fart.

Turok 2: Seeds of Evil (Remaster)

Turok 2 is (as far as I can remember) the first FPS I've ever played, and had so many cool things... in the entire ten minutes or so I saw for the time at least. I never could beat the first level, and even now let's face it... it's a bit crazy for a first level. There are people even now refunding it over that, or saying it does in-fact take about an hour or two. Oh and the developers seemed to know it to, because they only made six levels like it. However it's a good thing I'm not one of those 1st level quitters anymore, because this remaster hit the right spot and made some great adjustments that made the game far more accessible. The awesome weapons, animation, and weird gameplay of the time all shine through with a remaster, and with added gore and a mode that mocks Super Hot... because why not? It was a spectacular nostalgic high during the month Turok 2 released, and yet it was all still weirdly new, and I've got to say I really enjoyed playing through it again... even if it wasn't all quite smooth sailing with the naturally crazy designs. Also they put a freakin' sun in the underground level for some reason, what the hell Nightdive?

Turok: Dinosaur Hunter (Remaster)

Because one wasn't enough. When I said I was on a bit of a turok high during 2's remaster, I mean for the franchise, so I ran back to play the first one as well. I really enjoyed re-exploring it with more respect for the differences between the two, and even wound up writing an article on the sort of strange sense of innocence weird games like these bring. It was very simple, yet complex enough to have depth, and it was really fun just getting back and making an even harder push to advance where I last left off. Both of Nightdive's remastered versions are worth a run for any major FPS or retro game fan.

Horizon: Zero Dawn

There are two major issues with Horizon that keep me from enjoying it way more. 1) The pacing for the main quest started to bottle itself up into long exposition halls. I love lore and everything, but this feeling of making an open world game and then forcing a major point of your game to go consistently down some of the most poorly designed corridors is stupid. Give me lore, but not at the expense of what the game has set up for you as actual gameplay. 2) I can't play on one of my televisions, because Horizon is among the games designed so carelessly that they aren't optimized with all televisions properly.

Bitching set aside, this game is pretty awesome for the most part. Nothing as phenomenal as some are making it out to be. It's essentially witcher + Far Cry with a cool theme, and a crappy bioware dialogue system occasionally edging in. There's nothing amazing about that, and before someone brings up "but these guys just did killzone before", then fuck you for ignoring how amazing Killzone was, and how talented Guerrilla have always been. Like Killzone, Guerrilla has taken popular overused tropes, and refitted them with an amazing touch. They just happened to choose the genre that everyone is more crazy for right now, and I'm slightly less so. I love the dynamic part destruction, the story, the machine monsters, but some of the repetition, open world fluff, and inventory management creeps in and brings it back down a little. It's a really good game, and definitely among the best of this year that I've played, but... well it's really good. Not incredible, just really good in my opinion.

Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Nintendo's doing something right, even if they're still screwing it up pretty hard in some ways. I've enjoyed, what, like... three articles bashing Nintendo's decisions around this particular Zelda, or it's fans defending the terrible weapon durability system? There's a lot of minor issues within this game, but for all that it has, Zelda has really done one huge element of it so good: exploring. Exploring in this game just feels so good for some reason. Running around, fooling with pick-ups, climbing everything, figuring out the little hidden depth in the game, it's all great. I've kind of put the game down for a while somewhere fairly early on due to other things just going on, or distractions, but make no mistake, I do appreciate a lot of little things this game is doing. While Horizon manages to hit a lot of great refinements in the familiar, Zelda revels in just the child-like play that should be in all open world games, yet is really in so few. In the end I'm not sure I can pick a better of the two, but they're both really fun open world games, and I'm glad I gave into my curiousity and gave this Zelda a chance.

Snake Pass

Snake Pass is a weird one. I loved it's core concept, absolutely delighted by the idea. It was a 3D platformer type environement, but formatted for a leg-less, no jumping snake. Unlike say Tinker, which was just a 3D platformer designed so badly they didn't put in a jump, Snake Pass was designed from the ground up with this crazy yet delightful twist. However the truth is, it's really more like a physics puzzle, just disguised. The level design and everything gave it away. It's very straight forward, very linear, small bits for levels that stack up in these little menu for "worlds", and the extras are just little collectibles on the sides. There's a sad lack of freedom or interest in the levels beyond just the very obstacles themselves. That said, I'll play Snake Pass any day over freakin' Never Alone. Snake Pass was still fun, full of good spirits and charm, and held my attention for the duration of it's whole adventure. Oh and if Sog-gee's world music doesn't sooth your soul, it's probably because you don't have one. That one piece of music is almost worth the price of admission. Snake Pass is a real fun and quirky puzzle platformer, even if it isn't as entirely fun as the games it's imitating at the surface.

BulletStorm: Fullclip Edition

This game got caught up in a lot of flak for various reasons, and it's sad nobody seemed to really give it a break. BulletStorm was an awesome overlooked shooter from last gen, and it's nice that it's not only back, but improved at the gameplay level and even given an option that essentially rewrites the campaign around a new character: Duke Nukem. It's a really good fit, though certainly not implemented the very best. It has issues, but it's a fun extra, and then there's all the other gameplay features. New echo levels, returning multiplayer, a new game+ with unlimited ammo for guns you've maxed out challenges for, etc. It's all a lot of fun, and I enjoyed returning to this game with a new sheen of polish.

Yooka-Laylee

Yooka Laylee is a good reminder of two things that ironically hinge on opposite ideas of the reception with this game: 1) The internet has inconsistent and stupid principles where they are eager to rip or praise a game over shallow or barely existing reasons, even the so-called professionals. 2) Rare was a bit overrated, and not the king of platformers like they're made out to be. I'm mostly going to talk about the 2nd one as it regards the exact game here. YL really reminded me of how Rare was never the king of it's hill, but still fun despite the faults. They have odd polish, knacks for making some occasionally strange puzzles or view shifts, and then there's just the extra contrivances. These guys made Star Fox Adventures, do I really need to say more?

Yooka Laylee is a lot of fun in most respects. It's got a fun spirit to it, some nice levels and challenges, but for every step forward it takes... there's a catch or a step back somewhere. The levels have a cool expansion gimmick, but yet there's only five of them... IN A 3D PLATFORMER. Then there's all the cool abilities you can get, which add some cool variety but... have some contrivances, including a really dumb energy meter that limits one of the most core moves and systems of general momentum. Then there's all the collectibles, some of which... are next to useless like how the transformative ones are very shallow, or how awful the minecart mini-game is. Yooka Laylee is a fun mess where a smaller team of leftover rare developers got to try and do something new on a slightly different scale and time, and it's a mixed bag of success and annoyance. It's worth a try, but perhaps not for $40, and it certainly isn't a good flagship to sell the genre on.

Prey

Ever since the first trailer, I was hyped for this game, even if some of the logic was irrational. No I'm not a Shock series fan. No, I don't like horror games. No, I don't necessarily have any interest in a space game that's designed to make you backtrack. However I do love Arkane Studios, and alien monsters with a slight thriller suspense. Is that good enough? Apparently so, because I fucking love this game! While it truly does take after System Shock in a lot of ways, and has that sense of horror layered in with the design, it's also got so much of what makes Arkane one of my favorite developers out there. The game is built with the heart and mind of that sneaky, introverted, crafty, and observing lonely player; the exact type of gamer I am, or think I am. The upgrades are found, not acquired through arbitrary XP counters. The quests and treasures are best found by paying attention, and being as nosy as possible. The people are all a bit eccentric or weird, and have some sense of confusion to their history that makes you very curious about them. The story is full of tricks, clues, and "gotch ya!" surprises. The best moments, are those accidents or strange occurrences within the world, where your creativity or resourcefulness clash with the environment to fantastic and unexpected results.

Then there's the real reason this game is topping stuff, and getting extra press attention and love: The detail and level design. There is so much insane care and thought put into the littlest of details. There's D&D games being played from the crew, an origin stories to a toy weapon you can find, people being grumpy or laughing at one another, secrets being shared or clues dropped that you can legitimately use, and choices or reactions to them are far more open than you might initially expect. I've heard of stories and player choices executed in ways I didn't know were possible, from people who had a genuine different outlook or course of action, and took to play styles I never thought of. There's quite a few opportunities where what appears like a binary choice, really has so many subtle outcomes. You can fetch or delete an important voice recording with some awful details they'll hate, but let's say you send it to them. Then right as they're about to go through it with you, you can choose to delete it right in front of their face and watch them freak out about it. Stuff like that is just brilliant, and when piled on top of all the other typically stuff I love in a game, Arkane has proven yet again they know exactly everything on my bucket list to make a brilliant game.

It's easy to see why Prey is my GOTY so far for this year. I've only played a human-only run so far as I write this, so I've yet to even unleash a massive part of the game, and I'm definitely ready to replay it. However my play time was over 30 hours, and I'm not that kind of guy to stay with a game over 16 hour-ish mark without it concluding. So... that's got to really say something here. This game is just brilliant. If you're into the slower, more crafty and exploratory First-person games, you owe it to yourself to grab this ASAP.