Goodbye 2013 Hello 2014

A couple weeks ago I was trying to figure out a top 10 list of my favourite games in 2013. I had trouble coming up with even 5 games that I could think of playing during the year. I hit up Wikipedia and looked over the games that came out and much to my dismay I barley played any of them...I owned quite a few, but barely scratched the surface on some of the consensus top picks. So, I decides to spend most of my holiday break so far trying to clean up that backlog. Here are some thoughts on what I've played or finished over the past few days. 

Guacamelee

I played this on the Vita, which by the way feels like the perfect system for small little Indie Games. It's one of those games that are being qualified as a metroidvania type, which is a game where you gain abilities throughout your quest that let's you explore previously unexplorable areas. In this game for example, early on you come across some areas you can't get to because they are blocked off by a red block, you find an ability shortly thereafter that let's you break through these blocks. I love these types of games when they're execute well, which Guacamelee definitely does. To pair with the metroidvania gameplay is the Luchador themed character and heavily Mexican themed world. Both work pretty well and are definitely unique in the games I've played over the years. Nice refreshing change and definitely a fun game. Short and sweet (about 5 hours to finish) definitely worth playing. 

Gone Home

This game was completely differnent than anything else I played in 2013. I've heard it described as a new take on a traditional point and click adventure and I think that was a pretty good description. You play as a young girl and the story unfolds, from a first person perspective, as you explore her family's house. You get all the information you need from letters left behind by your sister or messages left on your answering machine. Essentially anything you can dig up in the fairly expansive house. It's definitely a fresh game and different than 95% of what you would play. I don't share the same exuberance that other people seemed to have for the game but it's definitely worth playing and it's a pretty short game so check it out if you can. 

Brothers: a Tale of Two Sons

Another short game I can check off my list and another superb experience. This game follows the story of two brothers searching for some medicine to help their ailing father. In the game you play both brothers at the same time. One side of the controller for each brother, the analog sticks move them and the triggers perform the context sensitive actions. The bulk of the game is spent solving puzzles using both brothers skills. The older brother is stronger and can move things the younger one can't, while the younger brother can fit into spaces the older one can't. The story was also able to elicit an emotional response which added to the whole package. Another game worthy of a couple hours of your time. 

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds

I'll admit I'm not the biggest Zelda fan, but I do enjoy the ones I play. Out of the series I've really only played through Wind Waker on the GameCube and Phantom Hourglass on the DS. Both were great experiences and I had a great time playing through them. For some reason though the other games in the series never interested me, or at least I didn't have the motivation to play them. I really liked this game though, and I think the portable platform is my preferred venue for the Zelda series. At least the games made for the platform. The main twist in this game is Link's (or in my case Cooklin) ability to merge with surfaces to make it to places that are in reachable by your 3D self. Nintendo also introduced the ability to rent items like the boomerang or the bow and arrow or bombs. They let you do this from the get go so almost any area is open for exploration, except for the areas that require special abilities that you discover later in the game. I really thought the dungeons were fun and I liked what the merge ability allowed for environmental puzzles. Really a great game and I'm looking forward to the next Zelda game that will put another twist on the classic game. 

Spelunky

I hate Spelunky for its unrelenting difficulty and the out of nowhere deaths. I love Spelunky for its unrelenting difficulty and tight controls. I played Spelunky on the 360 and I enjoyed it, but I wasn't obsessed with it like I am on the Vita. Another game that makes me super excited for the possibilities for the platform as a the best channel for indie platformers. I'm super excited to play Rogue Legacy on this thing. 

XCOM: Enemy Within

The expansion pack to my favourite game of 2012, so I was definitely excited to play it. So far it seems like it adds some new augmentations, a new class and new mission types. The game seems to start the same way as Enemy Unknown but introduces gene modifications and the MEC class pretty early on. I'm liking the gene augmentations so far, adds some nice health regen abilities and additional aim bonuses. I also threw one of my squadies into the new MEC class and I'm not a huge fan so far. It's very similar to the heavy class which I didn't use in Enemy Unknown. I'm going to give it some time but we'll see if I stick with it. One of the new mission types has you send one of your agents into a country that has had extremely high panic levels because of a rebel group, called Exalt, causing trouble. Once the agent completes their mission you send in a squad to thwart the Exalt and to extract the agent. Seems like it's going to be a great time and I hope I can sink a few more hours into it. 

SpeedRunners

I played this with a few good friends and it's really the only way to play it. It's a four player racing game where you're racing with people instead of cars. The game is played like a side scrolling 2D running game. Similar to a kart racing game there are items you can use to help you or to hurt your opponents. There are also boosts and obstacles littered throughout the levels as well as grappling hook points. Your runner is equipped with a grappling hook that can move you quicker than running and also allows for some very skillful grapple points to quickly change your momentum once you've had to switch which direction you were running. The game is super fun and should only be played with friends on a couch. 

Samurai Gunn

Played this with the same friends as SpeedRunners. We didn't spend too much time with it because SpeedRunners stole the show but I did enjoy my time with it. Maybe I'm getting old but it was a bit hectic, a lot going on and a lot to keep track of. I would definitely like to try it again, but we'll see if anyone else is interested in playing it. 

Tomb Raider (2013)

Another game that had a lot of good buzz throughout the year and another game I had on my backlog. I'm a few hours into it and I'm loving it. It feels a lot like Uncharted in terms of the traversal elements of the game. The combat feels better and the bow and arrow are a lot of fun to use. The redesigned Lara really gets beat up in a lot of sequences and it's a super gritty experience but I've been having a great time with it so far. I look forward to finishing it off and hopefully it stays super high quality all the way through. 

PAX East day 1

Games I played:

Street Fighter IV 3DS - First hands on with the 3DS was one of the games I want to pick up on release. First, the 3D in the 3DS works, and it works pretty well. The one issue that I've seen many people say (and I experienced as well) is that you need to have the 3DS at a very particular angle for the 3D to work. But when it works it's really 3D. It's quite impressive. The game itself was Street Fighter on a handheld. The new angle they introduced for the 3DS version kind of sucked. It's hard to tell how far away someone is (even with the 3D)

The Swarm - Another downloadable game. I think it's coming out on PSN and XBLA. I played the PSN version and it's cute and entertaining. You control a swarm of little blue guys that you must guide through to the end of the level. You have different ways to control the little ones; you can spread them out to reach more collectibles, you can bunch them together to pile on top of each other to reach higher collectibles. Another fun game that I'm sure I'll grab on release.

Gunslinger - The new game from Twisted Pixel being released on XBLA and for use with Microsoft's Kinect. You control a small marionette gunslinger running through each level. Using your left hand to move the puppet around and your right hand is used to paint targets and shoot them. It's a great concept and a good idea for a Kinect game. Control was still a little spotty but it's still a demo. Plus these guys have released one of my favourite XBLA games ('Spolsion Man) so definitely going to pick up the final product.

Fez - Another XBLA game, this one played with a regular Xbox controller. I've been hearing about this game for over a year. It's essentially a side scroller in a rotating 3-D world. From the demo I played you're trying to get to the top of the level by jumping and climbing through the level. The twist is that you have control over the world itself. You rotate it to find better angles, new platforms or new places to climb. Really looking forward to the final release of this game, going to pick it up for sure.

Things I saw:

LA Noire - This game took the biggest chunk out of my day. Mostly because of the 2 hour wait to see the game (that's right you didn't even get to play it!). The 2 hours waiting in line seemed like it took forever, but once you got in and the folks at Rockstar demoed the game you quickly saw that it was worth it. The detective work seems very cool, very reminiscent of Heavy Rain. And the graphics are just wow. The new tech Team Bondi is using for their facial capture is absolutely stunning. It really is like they have real life actors in the game doing their performances. Insanely cool and a little freaky when you think about how far video games have come. Also a definite must buy (I'm going to be very poor after all these games come out)

Giant Bombcast - Last event of the day. Ended up waiting in line for 1.5 hours for this. It's truly amazing how far these guys have come considering where they started. I'm very happy for them and it's great to see that they've got such a devoted following. The podcast was awesome, great humor, great crowd interaction and the live band was on point. It's everything I would have expected from a live Giant Bombcast after listening to all of their podcasts over the years. If they were releasing a game I'm sure I'd buy it on day 1 too, but the only way I can give them money is to buy a membership...I've already done that so no more money for them.

02-09-2009

It has been a long time since a true update (the last post I made I started writing a while ago and only just published). I haven't had much time nor desire to game so I've been occupying myself with my other hobbies (www.flickr.com/photos/joncook).
But I have played a little bit of a game I've been meaning to get around to for some time.

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots - This game was released sometime in June 2008 and I had started it around then. I had put it down after the first 3 acts and decided with all the GOTY 2008 buzz the game was getting that I would pick it up again and try and finish it. I had left off in the middle of Act 3 where I was to follow a target through an old time European city. It took me a little bit to figure out who I was looking for and what I had to do but once I did I jumped right back in. It felt like typical old school Metal Gear sneaking around...at first. Then I decided that it would be much easier to tranq the guards and then pop them once in the head while they were taking a nap. This definitely made tracking my target easier but when I first started doing this I didn't remember who I was looking for. So I ended up tranquing and killing my target. Not good. Eventually I got through it and it led to an exciting motorcycle chase which was definitely the highlight of the Act. Great camera angles, great action, great graphics and okay controls made this section fun. You take the role of the shooter while your temporary AI companion drives. Right before this and right after this are of course the usual MGS 1/2 hour long cut scenes which look gorgeous but at times I just lost interest. That's probably due to my short attention span but I think I'm also getting tired of the laughable dialogue and lame characters. Okay, it's not that bad but it gets to the point where the game looks so good that it's hard to take it seriously when Snake is admiring the cleavage of a 60+ year old woman or a soldier shits his pants or the corny dialogue exchanged between said soldier and his commanding officer. At least the game doesn't take itself too seriously but when it looks that good I expect the rest of the product to come together.
I also made it through Act 4 which was also a good time but nothing entirely ground breaking. Just great solid gameplay and level design. The boss fights at the end of Act 3 and Act 4 have been good but not as innovative (or gimmicky) as the battles in the original MGS. Beating Psycho Mantis by plugging the PS1 controller into the 2nd player control port so he could not read your movements was genius. MGS4 pretty much boils down to shooting the boss when you see it. It gets a little more complex than that but I found myself searching for the boss and when finding her just shooting her with the biggest weapon I had. Not that it isn't fun but just a little plain.
The one boss fight that was a slight exception to this was the fight against Vamp. That fight had a little bit more to it than just running around and shooting.
I turned off the game at the beginning of Act 5 so I have one more to go before I finish. I'm looking forward to the final act and I'm going to try and play through it again, this time without the long lag between sessions.

Entry 7 - 01-19-2009

It's been a while since I've played something. This weekend though I was able to squeeze in some quality time with the 360.

Here is what I played:

NHL '09 - I bought this very close to the actual release of this game. Up to this weekend I had only played a handful of games in the Be A Pro mode and haven't touched it since. Not that it's bad, just that I wasn't entirely in the mood for a hockey game. But like most other games, sports games are much better with friends. We played a couple games of '09 at Parker's on Saturday and it was a grand ol time. Still on this good feeling with the game I picked it up and played about a period and a half of the Be a Pro mode. Again it's not a bad game I just don't think I'm in the mood for a sports game. Sports games are more fun with other people anyways so I'll be playing this again when I have some friends to beat.

Halo 3 - I was about as surprised as you were that I cracked open the case on this game. 2 years after it's release and Parker and I decided to play some multiplayer. It was pretty much as I expected it would be. Fun but also frustrating. Everyone is much better than I am and can do many things I can't. But then again it's always fun sniping a headshot or meleeing someone with the butt of your battle rifle.

Braid - Decided to come back to this game after taking some time off from it. It has been a while but I was able to pick up right where I left off. Solved some puzzles, got some puzzle pieces and called it a night. The one thing this game does really well is it makes you think in ways you never have in any other video game. It seems to be the case that solving some of the puzzles requires extremely precise timing of your time freezing ability and leaves little room for error. A little frustrating at times when you know what you have to do and you just need to get the timing just right for everything to fall together. In one situation I had to slow down some canon balls and make it through a tunnel with a key. Which wasn't so bad except for getting out of the tunnel and back onto the ladder. It took me a few tries because there were two canons firing at different intervals and I had to time it just right so I would be able to jump over one and jump under the other. Of course I also had to leave myself enough time to get out of the tunnel before the first canon ball beat me to it. The satisfaction of finally getting the timing down is great, but the frustration of the repeated tries was trying.

Entry 6 - 01-12-2009

Entry for the end of the weekend. I was able to get in some quality time with the PS3. I no longer live with it and currently I am only able to play it on the weekends. Here is what I played:

Mirror's Edge - When I first played the demo to this game I loved it. I fell in love with the first person free running and loved the how fluid the movement and controls were. Upon reading reviews and initial reactions of the full game, I was apprehensive about opening my shrink wrapped pre-ordered copy. Out of the gate the gaming world was relaying that the game fell far short of expectaitons. It was a frustrating and short trial and error trek through a very beautiful game with many flaws. After realizing I shouldn't let these people's reactions force me to return the game and I remembering I only spent $10 on it, I finally decided to tear it open. 

During my first play session I went through the first three missions and had fun with it. I understood the frustrations and experienced the trial and error gameplay. I put it down for a bit and finally picked it up again this weekend. I burned through missions 4 to 9 and finished off the game. It is the only game I played (I had planned to try and make it through MGS 4) and it was the only game I wanted to play. The trial and error gameplay to me was non existant. Every situation I was put in I was able to see what I had to do and I just had to get my fingers to press the buttons at the right times in order to make it work. And when it worked it was very cool. I loved running at full speed off a ramp then a transition to a wall run then a transition to a 90 degree turn to jump to a platform that is hanging 100s of feet in the air. I also loved walking into a room and pressing the circle button (a hint button to direct your view to where you have to go) and seeing that I had to travel from the bottom of the room to the top of a 500 foot pillar. Everytime I walked into a room I had to figure out where to go to get to the next point and that was always fun to me. I loved having to find the first ledge or the first handhold to grab onto to make it to the next point. The other aspect of the game was the combat. While not exactly deep it was fun. At the beginning of the game an enemy encounter would get me cursing at the TV because it was annoying to try and make it past the blues. But as I played more I learned the finer aspects of the enemy encounters. You have to isolate the enemies and take them out one by one. That really made the combat much more interesting and much more fun. Entering a room full of blues went from a shoulder slumping curse-fest to an exciting game of cat and mouse. I would run around the room jumping between different floors and the blues would chase me. Then I isolated the enemy and would jump kick him to the head and then kick him in the crotch and give him a nice punch to the noggin. That would knock out most enemies so the next step was to get up to full speed again and isolate the next guy. By the end of the game the combat was not the big let down that it was in the beginning. It helped break up the free running and kept the enjoyment of the game at a high. At the end I could definitely say that I enjoyed every aspect of the game. The only issue I had was the frustration of missing a button press or the game seemingly not doing what I told it to do.  

As for other aspects of the game (e.g. graphics, atmosphere, etc) the free running on the roofs of buildings was always exhilirating and it was enhanced by the sound of wind whipping past your ears when you hit a full speed sprint and were leaping and rolling from building to crane to building. Falling to your death always gave me that vertigo sickly feeling in my stomach. Mirror's Edge is a very immersive game.

My only regret in my purchase of the game is that I didn't get it for the 360. Besides the obvious lack of achievement point whoring, I prefer the feel of the 360s analog sticks. Especially for controlling first person games. But there is exclusive DLC to look forward to on the PS3. So hopefully that will change my regret to a feeling of joy!

Entry 5 - 01-09-2008

Had a nice short and sweet gaming Session with Griebs last night. 
Here is what we played:

N+ - I had some work to catch up on so I watched Mr. Griebs play probably his favourite game, possibly of all time. Watched him die and die and die and pull of some amazing moves. That game is one of the most frustrating experiences in gaming. It punishes in the right ways. It's difficult because of design, not because of faults with the game. It takes a lot of skill to succeed in the harder levels, so it's very rewarding. But getting there is a real test of one's patience.

Call of Duty: World at War - By the time I finished up my work Griebs had just about as much as he could take of the little Ninja so we booted up some CoD to get some co-op action going on. First things first, the way they do the split screen is different and good. It's not the typical "split the whole screen in two" method of split screen. It splits the screen but keeps the usual aspect ratio. It does this by having the two screens "floating" next to eachother. It's similar to having two smaller TVs contained in one big one. It works well and I like it much better this way than the traditional way of split-screen.  Besides that though the game is very generic. Not much to separate this from the other shooters out there. I haven't played many WW2 shooters (probably only CoD2) so I am not burned out on that concept. But the game feels very generic in the way the story is structured and the missions are structured. Nothing surprising or ground breaking so far. But it is a solidly generic game after the three (or so) missions that Griebs and I played. Plus anything in co-op is better because you're playing with someone else. So points for that.

Entry 4 - 01-07-2008

During my gaming session last night I read about the 1UP/EGM destruction...it was quite a shock. I don't personally know any of the people that work there but it's amazing how attached you can get to people just through a podcast. 1UP's podcasts to me were what differentiated it from the rest of the other Internet sites out there. They were really taking videogame journalism to new areas with their podcasting and videos. That is the part that I will miss the most. So much potential wasted and possibly never realized. Hopefully everyone who lost their job will land on their feet and move on to bigger and better things.

And here is what I played last night:

Gears of War 2 - Played some Horde mode with Parker, Diego, Diego's sister and Parker's buddy Quach (I think that's how you spell it). I love Horde mode. Definitely the best part of multiplayer for me. Waves and waves of bad guys against you and four other dudes/dudettes.  The kind of team play that this mode can foster is incredibly satisfying. We played on the Hardcore difficulty level and started at Wave 10. We made it to Wave 20 but could not beat it. We played on the Stasis map and basically hit a wall where we could just not kill the Locust fast enough. The biggest obstacle are the Blood Mounts. On Hardcore the mount has a strike attack that knocks you down with one hit. It's difficult to avoid when there are 2 blood mounts, Grinders, Boomers, Maulers and tickers running around the same area. The best way to take them out is to shoot the mount in the head until it shakes off it's helmet. While it's shaking off it's helmet shoot the rider off and move in for a chainsaw or finish of the mount with some shotgun shells. Sounds easy, but difficult to pull off in practice.  All in all my ass was saved many times by my teammates and we all had a great time. I think they might have gone on playing after I tried to get some rest.