Super Smash Bros: Project M

PMDT - 2013 - Wii

(On my Top 10 Favorite Games list)

(Author's note: I originally reviewed this game at the end of 2013 when Project M 3.0 first launched. The review contained some outdated information and I wasn't too happy with what I wrote begin with, so I rewrote it as of 9/21/2015. You can read the original review as a comment below)

What is Super Smash Bros: Project M? No, Nintendo didn't sneak in a fifth Smash title without you noticing, Project M is a fan-made mod of Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the Wii to make it play more like Super Smash bros. Melee for the Gamecube, hence the M in Project M. But this isn't to be confused with Nintendo's most recent Smash title, Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U which fans have just taken to calling Smash 4 because the former is a mouthful. Confused yet? Let me start over from the beginning. In 1999, developer HAL labratory and Nintendo launched Super Smash Bros. for the Nintendo 64. It featured all of the most well known Nintendo mascots in a fighting party game where emphasis was on knocking the opponent off of the stage. There were no health bars in the game; there was only a damage counter. The more damage you dealt, the farther your target will fly the next time they're hit. Super Smash Bros, henceforth referred to by fans as Smash 64 to avoid obvious confusion with other Smash titles, was a critical and commercial success. It was intended to be a fun party game, but some people (myself included) enjoyed playing it with friends competitively with its wacky items turned off.

Then in 2001, Super Smash Bros. Melee for the Gamecube was released. It was amazing. It was more full featured, faster and had more depth than Smash 64. But more importantly, its game engine better facilitated the competitive playstyle that I enjoyed from the previous game. 15 years later, Melee still retains a large competitive audience and the Melee tournament scene is still active and growing. There's an excellent documentary on YouTube if you'd like to learn more about Melee and its top players, but we're here to talk about Project M - and I'm almost there. In 2008, Super Smash Bros. Brawl was released for the Nintendo Wii. It featured, by far, the largest playable roster of fighters, more stages and more items and a more fleshed out single player mode. It was a fine party game, but most fans of competitive melee didn't care for Brawl. The Brawl physics engine didn't allow for the fast-paced, combo heavy gameplay of Melee. Furthermore the perceived balance of Brawl's roster was so lopsided that one character, Meta Knight, started to be banned from use in some tournaments.

So now enter Project M. It was designed by a collective of Brawl modders now known as the Project M Development Team (PMDT) to be a complete overhaul of Brawl to make it play more like Melee, changing everything from the physics engine to character balance and movesets. Fighters from Melee were mostly reverted or approximated to their Melee counterparts while Brawl newcomers were reimagined in the Melee engine and in most cases given new animations, movesets and playstyles. New gameplay modes and features, new characters, and new stages were added as well. I think there's more that sets Project M apart from Brawl and the PMDT have made so many changes that in my eyes, Project M really is its own game and not just a mod of Brawl. It's relative ease of installation is also a huge plus, only requiring its users to have a copy of Brawl and an SD card with custom files (which you can find here for free) loaded onto the Wii. No other permanent modifications need to be made to the system or the game.

In addition to approximating the physics engine of Melee, Project M has several other features that benefit competitive play like built-in stage striking and debug mode with hitbox displays and a frame advance feature. So now some of you may be thinking "That's cool and all, but I have no interest in competitive play. Should I still check out Project M?" Yes. There's lots of really cool and unique new features in Project M that make it worth checking out on its own. Ever want to play a different character on every single stock? Project M's all-star vs. mode has you covered. Ever wanted to play Smash like a traditional fighting game with hit points and death boundaries turned off? You can do that too. If you really want to get ridiculous, check out Project M's turbo mode which allows any move you do to be on hit canceled into any other move.

The attention to detail is another thing that's really nice about this game. When character's movesets were being reimagined and tweaked to fit competitive gameplay, homages to the various series each fighter is from were worked in. For instance, Snake can now use his tranquilizer gun and survival knife from Metal Gear Solid, Lucas can use "Offense Up" from Mother 3, and Samus can switch between ice beam and fire beam, like in Metroid Prime. Brand new stages have also been created with a high level of fidelity and detail. Some even include cool easter eggs and other visual secrets. A brand new announcer was added to the game along with new music tracks and imported sound effects from Melee. Actually, if you're a little more technically inclined, it's not too hard to figure out how to replace the music files for the game yourself and create your own tracklist for this game.

Super Smash Bros. Project M Video Review

Summary
I really enjoy Project M. It's my personal favorite Smash game to play due to all of its competitive-friendly features and roster balance which the PMDT maintains through semi-frequent patches. I know Project M has been struggling to stay in the spotlight recently, due to the release and popularity of Smash 4 in conjunction with Nintendo sponsoring Twitch streams of Smash tournaments and obviously not having an interest in promoting a game that's not their own. But I hope the audience for this game will continue to grow cause I really enjoy playing it with other people. I'd say it's worth finding a copy of Brawl and dusting off your Wii if this looks interesting to you. It's a blast to play whether you're a competitive or casual player, newcomer or Smash veteran.

999: 9 hours, 9 persons, 9 doors

Chunsoft - 2009 - DS

Yet another interactive story game feeding my newfound love of games like this.. After playing Heavy Rain and To The Moon, I wanted more games like this and 999 delivers. 999 is probably what you’d get if you made the Saw movies into a Japanese Anime. And then made that into a video game.

In 999, your character wakes up locked in a room with no memory of how or why he’s trapped there. You’ll eventually escape the room to find that you’re one of 9 people trapped on an old cruise ship. You learn that you've been imprisoned by someone named “Zero” who wants the 9 of you to play survival game that involves solving puzzles to find a sequence of 9 hidden doors somewhere on the ship that supposedly lead to your freedom. The problem is that your party only has 9 hours to find the doors before you’ll all be dead, hence the title 9 hours, 9 persons, 9 doors. Sounds like something Jigsaw would cook up in one of the Saw movies except this game was made in Japan, so all of the characters are very anime looking and have ridiculous goofy looking colored hair.

The writing in this game is pretty strong. The characters are distinct and well developed and the story seems pretty well thought out. There are a few times where this game’s attempts at humor will fall flat, but it does a masterful job of creating and maintaining suspense throughout the story. It’s one of those games that will keep you thinking about the story even when you’re not playing it. The game is mostly just reading text and making dialogue choices, but there are a few puzzle solving sections as well. The puzzles usually involve searching a room for items or solving some simple math based problems. If you don’t figure out the puzzles on your first few tries, the game will automatically start providing hints until you understand what the game wants you to do, so you probably won’t ever be stuck on a puzzle in this game for very long.

I was really all set to love this game and start singing its praises - until I finished it. Based on some of the decisions and dialogue choices you make in the game, you will get one of several different possible endings when you finish the game. What broke my heart about this game is that you’re guaranteed to get a “bad ending” on your first playthrough. In order to get the “true ending”, you have to play through the game several times. Screw that. This is a narrative based game! That would be like reading through a book several times before you’re allowed to see what the “real ending” is. And it’s not just that there are “bad endings”, it’s that the bad endings leave so many loose ends and unanswered questions that are only given in the “true ending”. But I don’t want to re-solve puzzles I've already solved, nor do I want to re-read text I've already read. Ugh. I was so disgusted by the design choice here that I just looked the true ending up on the internet.

Summary:
What a shame, I would have really liked this game… Apparently there’s a sequel for this on 3DS, but I need to make sure they don’t repeat this forced bad ending crap before I check it out. If you can overlook this game’s flaws, it does tell a compelling story. Just expect to be disappointed at the end.

Batman: Arkham Origins

Warner Brothers Games Montreal - 2013 - PC/X360/PS3/WiiU

I think Batman needs to just give up on Gotham and find a city worth protecting. It seems like 99% of everyone you run into in Gotham is a criminal. I mean it made sense in the first game where Batman was in the asylum and all of the inmates had gotten loose. And I guess it made sense in the second game too, when all of Arkham’s residents had gotten loose again and taken over the city. But now in this game, aside from the fact that it’s Christmas Eve, it’s a normal day in Gotham city and the streets are still covered with criminals. Literally every single person you see on the street is either a criminal or a member of the SWAT team. Where are the normal citizens? Exactly who is Batman protecting here?

Anyway, Batman: Arhkham Origins is, as the title suggests, part of Batman’s origin story and takes place in the early years of Bruce Wayne’s career in crime fighting. It tells of Batman’s first encounters with characters like Killer Croc, James Gordon and, of course, The Joker. The game begins with the criminal organization leader known as Black Mask placing a 50 million dollar bounty on Batman’s head. Several B-list Batman villains, most of which I had never heard of before, show up in Gotham to try to take down Batman and collect the bounty. But then of course The Joker shows up and upstages all of the other villains. Sounds like a typical Christmas Eve for Batman.

This game was actually not made by Rocksteady, the studio that did the last two games, but by WB Montreal. If you don’t count the WiiU port of Arkham City (who does?), this is actually WB Montreal’s very first game, which made me a bit nervous to try it. You’d never know it though, the quality and polish of Arkham Origins is pretty high, so I suspect there were a lot of veteran developers brought on to the WB Montreal team. Actually, if I hadn't known the series had switched developers, I doubt I would've noticed at all; Origins is so similar to the other two games, especially Arkham City. A lot of the animations, game mechanics and even the models and assets from City seem to be copy/pasted into Origins, so I guess Rocksteady gave WB Montreal access to their source material.

There’s really not much new introduced in this game either, which I guess is a bit disappointing, but I had been meaning to replay Arkham City anyway and this was a nice way to do it - with a different narrative layered over the pre-existing gameplay. Actually, just about the only noticeable difference between Origins and City is the change in voice actors. I was disappointed to not see the actors from the animated series and the other games return to reprise their roles, but the new actors do a fine job. The new Batman actor does a younger and angrier emulation of Kevin Conroy’s Batman and the new Joker’s portrayal is a bit more edgy and dangerous feeling than Mark Hamill’s Joker. Different, but still good.

Summary:
This game is quite similar to Arkham City and what you thought of City will likely be the same thing you think about Origins. I had fun with this game, so check it out if you were a City fan.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds

Nintendo - 2013 - 3DS

See also my Top 10 Zelda Games list

There’s really only two video game franchises I’m a diehard fan of. I've played pretty much every Final Fantasy (except the MMOs) and I've played pretty much every Legend of Zelda game (except the DS ones). As mentioned in my Pokemon review, I have handheld-phobia which is why I haven’t bothered to play Spirit Tracks or Phantom Hourglass yet, but after finishing Pokemon X, I had confidence enough to try A link Between Worlds. My favorite entries in the Zelda franchise have been the 3d ones (Ocarina, Majora’s Mask and Wind Waker), but A Link to the Past is the only other game I've bothered to play through multiple times. So I was excited to play a direct sequel to that game. By the way, as long as Nintendo is doing direct sequels to games in their franchises, can we get a Majora's Mask sequel? Or at least another Zelda game with a weird and dark tone like that game had?

Love that game… Anyway, if you’re a Link to the Past fan, this game is going to feel very familiar. Music, sound effects, locations. Actually, about 5 minutes into the game, I realized they had copy/pasted the world map from the original game. I haven’t gone back to A Link to the Past to see if it was totally 100% copy/pasted but it’s pretty darn close. Your house, Kakariko Village, Hyrule Castle and everything else is right where it was on the SNES. Actually, some of the boss fights are completely copy/pasted from A Link to The Past, which I’m actually okay with. It’s usually not rocket science to take down a Zelda boss. Just stab whatever’s glowing, and if that doesn't work, cycle through all the items in your inventory till you find something that does. So I don’t think it really spoils anything when this game pays homage to the classic game’s bosses. If you've never played A Link to the Past, I still think you’ll get a lot out of this game, but you just won’t get all of the cool references to its predecessor.

What makes this game differ from other Zelda games is that you can rent every piece of equipment from nearly the beginning of the game. But if you die, you lose all of your equipment you had. That is, unless you purchase it, but purchasing equipment is way more expensive that renting it. Also the dungeons in the game can be explored and taken in any order since there’s not a linear progression of obtaining items. This was an interesting change and they definitely pulled it off, but I’m not sure if I personally liked it or not. It’s just different.

Where this game really excels is in the puzzle design in the dungeons. The solutions to the puzzles are almost always “AH HA!” than “What? Really??”. Whereas I felt the opposite to be true in some of the recent entries in the Zelda franchise. Actually, I think this is some of the best puzzle design in any of the Zelda games. The 2d/3d wall painting thing works really well as a puzzle solving mechanic and there are a lot of really good design choices made on all of the mechanics and puzzles found in the game.

Summary:
Overall, I found A Link Between Worlds to be a very solid Zelda game and although I haven’t played Spirit Tracks or Phantom Hourglass, it’s my favorite Zelda since Wind Waker.

Papers, Please

Lucas Pope - 2013 - PC

This may have been the most unique game I played this year. In Papers, Please, you play a immigration clerk screening immigrants for potential entry into the fictitious country of Arstotzka. Immigrants give you their paperwork and it’s up to you to process and find any discrepancies in their papers.

At the end of the day you’ll have to choose how to spend your very small paycheck - on feeding your family, paying the heat bill, or providing your children their medicine. And you probably won’t have enough money for all of it. You’ll want to process as many immigrants as you can as quickly as possible, because you’re paid by how many you process per day. But you don’t want to go too fast or you may miss a discrepancy in their paperwork and have to pay a fine. It’s kind of a nerve wracking and depressing game to play. But I don’t mean that as a negative criticism of the game, it was clearly designed to invoke those kinds of emotions. You really get the feeling of what it’s like to be a desk clerk doing a menial but stressful job and getting paid next to nothing for it.

Summary:
It’s an interesting and unique indie game. It’s not my favorite, but it’s certainly different, which is always good.

To The Moon

Freebird Games - 2011 - PC

So in the distant future, we apparently have the technology to alter people’s memories. To The Moon focuses on Dr. Neil Watts and Dr. Eva Rosalene, two memory traversal scientists who work for a company that uses memory altering technology to grant dying clients their last wish. Watts and Rosalene are hired by Johnny Wyles, an old man on his deathbed whose dying wish is to go to the moon.

You alternate control between Watts and Rosalene as you travel through Mr. Wyles entire life’s memories while you try to implant a memory of him going to the moon. If you hadn't guessed by the description so far, this is another narrative focused game. Actually the gameplay is somewhat analogous to Gone Home where advancing to the next scene in To The Moon requires examining different objects in the scene to determine if they’re relevant to the story or not. There’s also a few very simple puzzle solving bits in To The Moon, which I felt weren't really that fun and ultimately didn't add much to the game.

But man, the writing in this game was tight. This is a game that really “worked” for me in contrast to Gone Home. I found the characters relatable, interesting and very well defined, and once you get a feel for who all the characters are, the game keeps you interested by teasing you with the mystery of why Mr. Wyles dying wish is to go to the moon. This game conveys emotion with storytelling and music as well as any other game I've played, and it’s use of humor and comedic timing got me to laugh out loud a few times. The game’s tone alternates between humor, mystery and tragedy and touches on the themes of love, life and death. It borders on being overly sappy sometimes, but I found this game to be a pretty interesting commentary on life and human interactions told through a unique perspective of two people viewing a stranger’s life’s memories. I hear the creators are working on a sequel now that should be out soon, which I can’t wait to play.

Summary:
Again, there’s not much “game” to be had here, but if you want an excellent interactive story, check this out. It’s good stuff.

Tactics Ogre

Quest - 1995 - SNES/Sega Saturn/PS1/PSP

One of the coolest SNES games you've probably never heard of, Tactics Ogre was first released on the SNES in Japan in 1995. Actually, it was never officially released in the U.S. until it was ported to the PSP a few years ago. But your best bet to play this game is probably a SNES emulator with one of the fan-translated ROMs, because no one I know actually owns a PSP.

Tactics Ogre was made by largely the exact same team of people that worked on Final Fantasy Tactics. Same director, same story writer, same composer and (some of) the same artists. This game will feel very familiar if you've ever played FF Tactics. I realize now that some of the battle scenarios and story scenarios for FF Tactics were lifted straight out of this game. If you've never played FF Tactics, Tactics Ogre is a turn based strategy game kind of like XCOM: Enemy Unknown. One of the cool differences in this game is that there are decision-based branching story points. I’m not sure why they went away from that for FF Tactics.

I really want to like Tactics Ogre more, but there are a few gameplay issues present in this game that weren't fixed until FF Tactics that make this game pretty annoying. Firstly, this game is hard. Like stupid hard. Like evil hard. Which isn't bad, but when you combine that with a permadeath mechanic where your units instantly die, it feels unfair. In FF Tactics when a unit’s HP hits zero, it begins a 3 turn timer where that unit is bleeding out and can be revived. They only will die when the timer hits 0. In Tactics Ogre when a unit’s HP hits zero, they’re dead instantly. So many ragequits. So many battles restarted. You’ll eventually get a class that can bring back units who have died in a battle, but it’s not until way late in the game.

This game is also way more grindy than FF Tactics. There were a few battles where I realized I wasn't even close to winning and had to level up my units for a bit before retrying. And like most RPGs, grinding in Tactics Ogre is not that much fun.

Summary:
If you want to try an obscure tactical RPG with some old school difficulty, you could do worse than Tactics Ogre.

The Stanley Parable

Galactic Cafe - 2013 - PC

I loved everything about this game. Loved it. If I had to pick a “Game of the Year”, Stanley Parable would probably be it, since FTL technically came out last year. I only wish this game were longer. I want a 20-30 hour version of this game. You’ll probably be done with this game in about 5 hours or so.

This will be another difficult one to talk about without spoiling anything, but The Stanley Parable is kind of a “choose your own adventure” with a narrator that describes all of your choices. You’ll likely keep restarting the game even after you've gotten an ending just to see what the other endings are. The game has a fantastic sense of humor and frequently breaks the 4th wall and pokes fun at video game tropes. The writing is excellent. Some endings will make you laugh, others will make you think. My favorite endings do both.

Summary:
I would recommend this to nearly everyone, just know that it’s unfortunately pretty short.

Pokemon X/Y

Game Freak - 2013 - 3DS

This was the first Pokemon game I had really gotten into since Gold/Silver, so a lot of the gameplay mechanics were new to me. I actually played a bit of Black/White earlier in the year, and it didn't click with me, so I was a bit nervous about playing X/Y. I was also a bit nervous to play this because I just don’t like playing on a handheld system. I don’t like being hunched over staring at a tiny little screen when I could just as easily lay back on my couch and watch a giant TV. I don’t have a need or desire to carry around a 3DS with me and play games on the go, so the entire concept of handheld gaming is a bit off putting to me, so I really had to make a focused effort to play this game despite its hardware. It was actually the first handheld game I had completed probably since I was a kid, and I actually found it kind of nice to play this while watching a football game on TV and battle between commercials and what not. Anyway, back to talking about the actual game.

If you've ever played a Pokemon game before, it’s really the same basic cake, only with a lot more icing on top. If you didn't like the cake to begin with, you probably aren't going to like it now. But for people who do like the original Red/Blue cake, the X/Y icing tastes pretty good. And if you've never played a Pokemon game before, X/Y probably isn't a bad place to start. They've streamlined the battling and made it way less grindy. In terms of gaining experience, it no longer really matters who the lead Pokemon is in a battle since all Pokemon in your active party will gain experience. I found this to be a really nice change that makes the game more about strategy and less about grinding. They've also added a lot of extra layers on top of the basic rock-paper-scissors battle system. There are passive abilities, equippable items, mega evolutions and more. I know some of that stuff was added in previous generations, but it was all new to me.

They've also finally successfully integrated the internet into a Pokemon game in the year 2013, which is really nice. You can trade/battle with friends or strangers pretty easily now. They've even added a kind of Pokemon auction house, where you can ask for certain pokemon of a specific level or with specific properties or you can post your own Pokemon up for trade. I think my favorite new system was “wonder trade” where you trade pokemon with a complete stranger without knowing what you’ll get in return. It could be a pidgey or it could be a gyarados. It’s probably going to be a pidgey though.

My main gripe against this game would have to be the difficulty. I know this game is marketed for kids, but man this game was easy. I breezed through most of it without really having to think too much. I don’t remember Red/Blue being quite this easy, so I think they could have easily dialed up the difficulty a few notches. I think what could really make an amazing Pokemon game is if they actually spent a few seconds constructing a decent narrative. It’s still pretty much just go out and battle Pokemon because… because Pokemon.

Summary:
Still a pretty solid game though, and battling with 3d Pokemon models rather than 2d sprites was pretty nice.

Gone Home

The Fullbright Company - 2013 - PC

The pitch for Gone Home is that you’re a college aged kid coming home from a long study abroad trip. It’s the early 90s, before cell phones or the internet, so your only recent communication with your family has been mainly letters and postcards. When you arrive home, your house is empty and your family is missing, so you have to explore the house for clues as to where they may be. When I heard this pitch, I was super excited to play the game because it sounded narrative focused, which I always like, and it was also interesting to me to design a game purely around the mechanic of searching a house. Unfortunately, I was a bit dissapointed in the execution of this mechanic after playing the game.

My main disappointment with this game is that, every time you find a clue as to where your family is, the game starts a voice over clip and spells out to you exactly what the game wants you to know after discovering the clue. I think it would have been way more powerful to let the player examine each object and determine for themselves whether the object is relevant to the story and let the player construct the narrative for themselves. I think it would give a sense of discovery and accomplishment that isn't really present in the game as it stands now. You kind of click through each object in each room until you find one that triggers an audio clip, and then just repeat the process for each room. The developers could have still saved the audio clips for the end of the game for a bigger impact. Right now, when the player reaches the end of the game, it just kind of ends unceremoniously and awkwardly.

It’s a bit difficult to talk about this game without spoiling anything, but people who have already played this game should know what I mean. I’m a bit torn on Gone Home because I recognize that it’s a very important and progressive game, but at the same time I feel that there are a lot of execution flaws with this game. Gone Home is starting to get a lot of attention and win some awards, which is all good, but I feel like some of the love this game is getting has to do with the subject matter in the game and not necessarily the game itself. Again, people who have already played this game will know what I mean.

The writing in the game is mostly solid for a video game, but that unfortunately doesn't say much. But there were a few gripes I had with the storytelling. It’s probably pretty hard to write solid and well defined characters around the mechanic of discovering objects in a house, but I found that I never got a really good sense of the player’s parent’s characters. They felt flat and undeveloped. Maybe this was on purpose, but I think it would have helped the overall narrative to flesh out these characters a bit more.

Summary:
As negative as I sound about this game, I would still recommend this to people who like narrative focused games. Just be aware that it’s very short; I finished it in one sitting. It’s also a very personal and intimate game from a storytelling point of view, so don’t expect something light or humorous or action packed. Your enjoyment of this game will probably depend on how much this game “works” for you. I don’t think this game really “worked” for me, but I really hope more games like Gone Home get made soon, if that makes any sense

Grand Theft Auto V

Rockstar North - 2013 - PS3/X360

Just from a sheer technological standpoint, I found this game quite impressive. To have an open world as large as GTA V did and with the amount of detail in the environments that this game had is pretty mind blowing. You can wander out in the middle of nowhere and look around and the environments will appear just as detailed and vibrant as they do in the heavy traffic city areas. Add on top of that the complex physics simulations and game systems, realistic character animations and large open world and this is probably the most technically impressive video game I've ever played. Especially when you consider that the game is running on 8 year old hardware.

Gameplay wise, it’s pretty much your standard GTA game. Drive around, blow stuff and cause chaos. What’s different about GTA V is that you can switch between one of three characters at nearly any time. The characters all have different personalities and missions as well as stats and abilities. One of the characters can do bullet time driving while one of the other characters can do bullet time…bullets.

The characters in GTA V all have distinct personalities and are incredibly well defined and well written. Especially when compared to other GTA games where I found all of the characters to be more or less forgettable. While I found the characters to be well written, I found a lot of the parts of the overall story to be hit and miss. Mostly miss. There were a lot of the parts of the story where the characters had no conceivable motivation to be doing what they were doing. Because the characters were so well written and defined, they sometimes felt out of place in story situations that were over the top. There’s a part in the story where one of the characters meets a total random stranger, flies up in a plane with him, rides an ATV out of the back of the plane and opens the parachute at the last possible second just for fun. Okay, but why? Why would my character decide to do this? Maybe I’m not supposed to take the story as seriously as I did, but the game seems to want me to. At least sometimes. GTA V seems to randomly decide to take the story quite seriously whenever it wants to and the tone oscillates between serious and ridiculous which is kind of jarring. The game will have you jumping ATVs out of planes one second, but then want you to care about these characters and their well being the next. Which didn't quite work for me.

But the fun of a GTA game is driving around and causing chaos, which this game does as well or better than any other GTA title. The missions were fun, no driving people around and having to call and chat with them constantly like GTA IV. There were only a small handful of missions in GTA V that I found to be boring or tedious. And there’s a frequent checkpointing system in the game so you’ll rarely need to replay a certain section of the mission over and over again if you fail. I've pretty much ignored the online portion of this game. I don’t know why, it just doesn't appeal to me.

Summary:
Overall, I found GTA V to be a pretty solid game, it’s my favorite in the series and I doubt fans of other GTA games will be dissapointed.

Persona 3

Atlus - 2006 - PS2

Yeah, this was a weird one. I had never played any of the other Persona games or any of the Shin Megami Tensei games for that matter, so I had no expectations here. Persona 3 is a very Japanese role playing game - keyword Japanese - about a teenager balancing high school life by day and dungeon crawling by night.

At the beginning of the game, the protagonist discovers he has the ability to stay awake during the “dark hour”, a hidden hour that takes place during midnight between days where monsters come out and attack sleeping civilians. He joins a group of vigilantes who combat these monsters and who also have the ability to stay awake during the dark hour. The group teaches him how to summon his “personas” which are summon monsters that can be used during combat. Most of the members of this vigilante group also happen to be students at his local high school as well.

So half of the game is spent at the high school, learning and making friends with students which somehow magically affects your battle stats somehow… I don’t know. And the other half of the game is spent dungeon crawling during the dark hour. The battle system is very slow, repetitive and grindy which was annoying to me. The high school sections were… interesting, I guess, to put it nicely. I don’t think this game was quite my cup of tea. Its writing is very Japanese, if you know what I mean, and a lot of it is… just… weird and off putting. There’s a boss fight in the game where you literally battle against a monster who is just a model of a painted naked woman with her legs open. I’m not kidding! Who decided to put this in the game? It’s weird and creepy.

Summary:
The battle system was too grindy and repetitive to hold my interest, but I could see how hardcore fans may find this game interesting, I guess. I just don’t think it’s for me.

Divekick

One True Game Studios/Iron Galaxy Studios - 2013 - PS3/Vita/PC

Divekick is a two button fighting game. Just two buttons. No joystick, no d-pad, no other buttons, just two. One for jump and one for kick. Each hit in Divekick is a one-hit-Knockout, so games go pretty quick. The game has a roster of 13 characters which all play surprisingly differently. At least I was surprised how much character variety can be had with a two button game.

Because there’s only two buttons, Divekick is also very accessible; there’s no memorizing combos or movesets, so anyone can jump right in and start playing. The game also has a very ridiculous sense of humor. There’s lots of poking fun at other fighting games, pop-culture references and internet humor references. There’s a character in the game who just quotes Will Smith lines from all of his movies. It’s quite silly.

Summary:
Overall though, I’d say there’s probably not a whole lot of depth or replayability with Divekick. It’s a fun novelty to have in your game collection, but it’s probably not going to hold anyone’s attention for very long.

Rogue Legacy

Cellar Door Games - 2013 - PC

Another game oozing with really smart game design, Rogue Legacy is probably what you’d get if you crossed Castlevania with a “bullet hell” game like Ghouls N’ Ghosts. Like Castlevania, the main objective of Rogue Legacy is to explore a castle and defeat several bosses within it.

But what sets Rogue Legacy apart and makes it really fun and interesting is that, when you die - and you will die a lot - you get to choose between 1 of 3 children of the character you were just playing to avenge their parent and explore the castle. Each child may have genetic abnormalities or traits that make the game play differently each time. Some will directly affect gameplay, while others are just for flavor. For example, you may have a child who’s a midget. They’ll have a smaller hitbox and be able to go through small openings, but they may also take more knockback. Or you might have a child who’s colorblind. Then the game is played in black and white until you die again. And each time you die, the layout of the castle is randomly rearranged, so it’s kind of like playing a brand new game each time. You’re also free to swap out skills and equipment to experiment with different playstyles if you’re stuck on a boss. Really cool stuff. On top of that, you’ll inherit your items from your parent when they die, but the game makes you spend the money you inherit on upgrading new items or skills before you reenter the castle. So each time you die, there’s a kind of moment where you think “Crap I died…But now I get to choose a new character and upgrade their items and skills!” A neat mechanic because it makes you never feel overly frustrated when you die. Which is good, because this game is hard. And you’ll die. A lot.

Summary:
I can’t really think of too many negative criticisms of this game, it’s very solid and well designed. Again, not too pretty to look at, but that doesn't matter to me for a game like this. Maybe the soundtrack was a bit unremarkable, but that’s nitpicking. Check out Rogue Legacy if you can handle a challenge.

FTL

Subset Games - 2012 - PC

I think FTL is probably my favorite new game I played this year, I absolutely loved this game. FTL is pretty much Star Trek: The videogame, but without the license. You manage the crew and systems of a starship while exploring the galaxy and fighting aliens. The gameplay sessions of FTL are typically short, you play until you die. So depending on your luck, skill, and familiarity with the game, a session can last between 15 minutes to maybe 2 hours.

What kept me playing this game again and again is that everything in a play session is randomized: The layout of the galaxy is different each time, the encounters you’ll experience are different each time, and the weapons and upgrades you’ll get are different each time. Each upgrade you get will likely change your battle strategy and tactics too, so it never feels like you’re doing the same thing over again. Plus completing certain achievements or sidequests in the game can unlock other starships you can use on your next playthrough that have totally different weapons and playstyles, so it kept me coming back for more. It really has some pretty brilliant game design.

FTL is also a fairly difficult game overall. There are currently only two difficulty settings: “easy” and “normal”. I probably would have labeled them “normal” and “hard”, but whatever. My only real knock on this game is that success in FTL can be dependent on which encounters you get, which is somewhat luck based. A few unlucky encounters in a row can be crippling, especially on normal(hard) difficulty. It’s also not that pretty of a game to look at either, but for an indie game made by a team of only two people, that’s to be expected. If you go and watch gameplay footage of FTL on YouTube, you’ll see what I mean.

Summary:
Don’t let its looks scare you off, I found FTL to be an excellent game. I think most gamers can enjoy this game, but I’d highly recommend it to fans of challenging strategy games or fans of Star Trek who’d like to see an actual good Star Trek game. I also hear the creators are releasing a free expansion pack with new weapons, ships and scenarios in the near future, so I’m pumped to play more FTL when that comes out.

Heavy Rain

Quantic Dream - 2010 - PS3

I had been meaning to play this game ever since I got a PS3 and I finally got around to it this year. Heavy Rain is really more of an interactive story than a game. You rotate control between a cast of four characters, all of which are trying to determine the identity of the mysterious “origami killer”, a serial killer who kidnaps young children, drowns them in rainwater, and leaves behind a small origami animal as a memento of each kill.

The gameplay of Heavy Rain consists mostly of watching cutscenes and waiting for “Quick Time Event” button prompts to appear on the screen. I’m normally not a fan of QTEs in video games, they seem like a lazy and outmoded design mechanic in most games to me. So I was a little afraid I wouldn't like Heavy Rain since the gameplay is so QTE dependent. But I quickly found out there’s really no fail state in Heavy Rain if you mess up a QTE. It’s not to say that the QTEs in Heavy Rain are meaningless, it’s just that there’s never a “Game Over” screen if, for example, you miss a QTE in a fight scene to block a kick. The kick hits your character and the story goes on, maybe a little differently than if you had successfully blocked the kick, but there’s never a “you lose the game” scenario.

Depending on QTEs and some decisions you’ll make in the game, the story will branch in different directions resulting in different endings or outcomes at the end of the game. I spoke to a friend who had played the game shortly after I had finished it, and although we had both defeated the origami killer and rescued the hostage, the details of our stories were wildly different, which was pretty cool.

This game is definitely not for everyone and does have its flaws though. There’s a lot of scenes where your character will just make breakfast or take a shower or get dressed or something mundane like that and it’ll depend on whether this works for you in terms of setting the mood and atmosphere, or if you’ll just find these events tedious and boring. There’s also a few scenes in this game which I thought didn't contribute to the overall story or progress the plot in any way, and also for a game that leans so strongly on it, the voice acting and animation are “meh”.

Summary:
If an interactive story sounds like your thing, I’d recommend Heavy Rain. I enjoyed it quite a bit and am looking forward to playing Beyond: Two Souls, Quantic Dream’s latest game.

Ni No Kuni

Level-5 - 2013 - PS3

Ni No Kuni is a collaborate effort between video game studio “Level-5”, (probably best known for Dark Cloud or the Professor Layton games) and the Japanese animation company, Studio Ghibli. I had previously never seen any of the Studio Ghibli films (I've now seen 3! Spirited Away is so far my favorite) and I had never played any of level-5’s other games, but I saw this game got good reviews on release and I wanted to see what the fuss was about.

Gameplay wise, it’s pretty much what would happen if you took Pokemon from 2d to 3d and replaced the turn based battles with real-time combat. You capture and evolve your “familiars” and each of them has strengths and weaknesses vs. other types of familiars. Rock paper scissors stuff. Each of your familiars has a stamina gauge, so you’re forced to swap in and out familiars quite a bit during the course of battle.

Story-wise, it’s pretty much exactly like playing through a Studio Ghibli film. There’s a kid with sick parents on an adventure, dual worlds, personified animals, all your standard Studio Ghibli stuff. It’s got a very whimsical Harry Potter-ish magic and wizards thing going on which, as a non-Harry Potter fan, I wasn't sure if that was going to do anything for me but I ended up liking the story quite a bit.

And for a very whimsical, cartoonish, kid-friendly game, Ni No Kuni has some pretty wicked difficulty. There were bosses I had to redo 7 or 8 times before I finally beat them. If I had to knock this game, I’d have say it’s probably a bit too long. I was ready for this game to be over before it actually was, and the game drags a bit near the end. Also a lot of the side quests are exactly the same thing over and over again, which comes off as lazy. But other than that, this is a very solid game.

Summary:
Ni No Kuni is the best Japanese RPG I've played in quite a while. Check it out if you like JRPGs, Pokemon or the Studio Ghibli films.

System Shock 2

Irrational Games/Looking Glass Studios - 1999 - PC

I picked this up off Steam hoping to fill the Bioshock void that Infinite left. It actually had a bit of a different feel than Bioshock, but it was just as good. I think this game was a bit ahead of its time and I can see why fans of this game complained that Bioshock was too “dumbed down” when it came out. There’s way more skill customization and RPG elements in System Shock 2 than Bioshock, which I like. You can upgrade your character’s hacking skill or repairing skill or shooting skill etc. to fit your playstyle. Kind of like Deus Ex.

It has the same horror tone and atmosphere from the first Bioshock games, but more futuristic sci-fi Alien-ish horror than 1920s gone wrong. The only sort of problem with this game is that it’ll feel a bit dated. The voice acting is completely laughable and it’s in that early era of 3d PC games where everything looks really blocky and low-res. Which actually can be just as horrifying when you can’t quite tell what you’re looking at when a blocky monster jumps out at you.

Check this out if you like Deus ex, Bioshock, old PC games or horror games in general.

Journey

ThatGameCompany - 2012 - PS3

Okay, I totally didn't understand this game. At all. This game gets a lot of recognition in the indie game scene for being a case for “games as art” and its won all sorts of awards and what not. I love games with atypical gameplay or games that try to do something completely new or unique. This game definitely does that but… but I don’t get it.

I don’t understand why this game gets the love that it does. Maybe I need to do another playthrough, I feel like I must've missed something. It’s a pretty short game, I finished it in one sitting. You just kind of navigate through the environment really. That’s about it. Sometimes other random players will join your game from online. But they don’t seem to contribute to the gameplay or progress the game in any way that I could tell. I get that the music sets the mood of the game really well, but video games do that all the time.

Summary:
I don’t know; this game was very baffling and disappointing to me

Guacamelee!

Drinkbox Studios - 2013 - PS3/Vita/PC

Guacamelee! is a Mexican-themed beat em’ up platformer with puzzle solving elements and a very silly sense of humor. I don’t usually dig beat em’ up games, but I’m glad checked this game out, it’s pretty awesome. You play as Juan Aguacate, a Mexican farmer who dons a magical luchador mask to become a superpowered wrestler in order to save his kidnapped girlfriend.

The game can be played solo or co-op, a second player can assume the role of the female wrestler “Tostada”. I played through the game both solo and co-op. The co-op makes the platforming sections a bit more frantic, but makes the beat em’ up sections and boss fights quite a bit easier.

The game has some Metroidvania elements as well: as you progress through the game and unlock new wrestling moves, you’ll gain access to areas you previously unable to reach. As mentioned before, Guacamelee! also has a very silly sense of humor. It’s chock full of “nerd jokes”, internet humor and direct references to other video games. It was kind of a fun “can you spot them all?” subgame within Guacamelee!; trying to catch some of the more subtle video game references. There was even a Zelda II reference in there! How many people are really going to get that one?

Summary:
Guacamelee! is a bit on the short side, but it’s quite good. Check it out.

Borderlands 2

Gearbox Software - 2012 - PC/PS3/X360

It’s pretty much more Borderlands. After playing the first Borderlands, I can’t really say there’s a lot of innovation or new content here. More guns, more enemies, bigger environments, stuff like that. But it’s pretty much the same game. I do love how varied and unique all of the different guns feel though. Each gun’s playstyle seems radically different from the last one, which is probably a hard thing to accomplish.

Summary:
I think my main problem with Borderlands is that it’s kind of the same thing over and over again, which usually wears on me pretty fast. To its credit, Borderlands makes doing the same thing over and over again as diverse and as fun as possible, but it still is what it is. I get why people like this game, it’s just not for me. I think part of it is this game being quest based and experience based and all that. It reminds me of playing an MMO, and I usually never find MMOs to be that much fun. This game’s attempts at humor don’t really do anything for me either, but again, I can see why people like it.

The Cave

Double Fine - 2013 - PC/X360/PS3/WiiU

The Cave is a puzzle/adventure game by Double Fine Productions, the game company founded by Tim Schafer, one of the lead developers of Monkey Island and Psychonauts. This game was directed by Ron Gilbert, who also had a hand in Monkey Island. I mention those games only because the writing and jokes and general silliness is the same in The Cave, so if you enjoyed the humor in those games, this is more of the same. By the way, if you haven’t played Psychonauts, check it out. It’s probably a bit dated now, but that game is criminally overlooked for how good it is.

Anyway, back to The Cave. At the beginning of the game, the game asks you to pick three of seven characters to take into The Cave to explore it. Each of the characters has a different power or ability that is used in the puzzle solving sections. For instance, “The adventurer” character has a grappling hook that allows her to swing from platform to platform wherever there’s a place to hook her grapple. You can switch between your characters at any time and puzzle solving usually involves controlling them asymmetrically i.e. having one character stand on a switch to open a door for another.

The layout and size of the rooms in this game seem unnecessarily large and solving puzzles requires a lot of walking back and forth between long hallways or large rooms for seemingly no reason. If memory serves, there are 4 generic puzzle solving “levels” in the game and 3 character specific levels. So if you take The Adventurer, The Knight, and The Monk into The Cave, there’ll be a Adventurer level, a Knight level and a Monk level in addition to 4 generic levels. That means, in order to see all of the endings and solve all of the puzzles, you have to replay the game 3 times because there are 7 characters and only 3 can be taken in The Cave at a time.

Summary:
One playthrough of this game was plenty for me. The jokes and silliness were on point and what I would expect from Schafer/Gilbert writing. But the quality of the puzzles and overall “funness” of the game fell a bit short of Monkey Island/Psychonauts standards.

FEZ

Polytron Corporation - 2012 - PC/X360

I was so excited to play this game. I preordered it on Steam and played it for hours the day it came out. FEZ is an indie platformer with puzzle solving elements, a retro feel and an emphasis on art style and music. All stuff that I love. But after about the first hour or two, this game’s charm wore off pretty quickly for me. After completing one “world”, FEZ redirects you to kind of a “hub world” where you can explore new pathways that link to other worlds. The problem is after I explored enough pathways, I had to tread back through worlds I’d already been through in order to try to find new pathways. Which is really not that much fun; to repeat sections of a level you've already done two or three times already.

FEZ’s main puzzle solving mechanic is based on the fact that you’re viewing your character in a 2d plane, but you can rotate the camera 90 degrees around your character to reveal that the world actually exists in 3d space. This mechanic had been done before in Super Paper Mario for the Wii, a game I found to be equally disappointing, but I digress. After solving a handful of FEZ’s perspective puzzles, the novelty wore off and all of the puzzles felt same-y. I found it to be just a matter of rotating the camera around and around until I saw a platform or whatever it was that let me get where I was trying to go.

Summary:
I admit that I didn't finish this game, and I hear there’s some cool stuff it does near the end. I’d like to try to go back and finish it, but it seems more like work than fun to me.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown

Firaxis Games - 2012 - PC/PS3/X360

I got this game for free by preordering Bioshock Infinite on Steam. I enjoyed this game sooo much more than Infinite. I like to think that I actually bought this game and got Bioshock for free. XCOM: Enemy Unknown is a turn-based tactical strategy game where you command a squad of soldiers battling an alien invasion. It’s actually a remake of an old PC game of the same name. I never played the original, but I've heard it has some UI issues that make it unintuitive and difficult to learn. This was the opposite. It was easy to get the hang of and felt familiar to me as someone who has played several games in this genre before.

XCOM also has a “permanent death” element where if one of your soldiers dies on the battlefield, he dies forever. Which made me restart a battle a few times when one of my best soldiers died, even though I probably would have won anyway. Soldiers can specialize in several different classes: Sniper, heavy, medic etc. and you can upgrade your soldier’s gear and abilities and what not. Nothing too groundbreaking or innovative, just a very solid tactical strategy game.

Summary:
Check this out if you like turn-based strategy, I enjoyed this game enough to finish it twice. It’s quite addictive. And difficult.

Bioshock Infinite

Irrational Games - 2013 - PC/PS3/X360

This, to me, was probably the most disappointing game I played this year. Nearly all of my friends and other people I spoke to who had played this game enjoyed it and the game was critically reviewed well, so I may be a bit alone here. I thought this game took a pretty big step backward in overall game design and pacing compared to the previous Bioshocks. There were large chunks of this game where I did nothing but shoot enemies, then there were large chunks where the game decided it wanted to tell a story for a while and just guided me around Columbia. But the chunks weren't mixed in throughout the game. They were just…chunks. It also took out the excellent level design that I loved from the first two games where upon entering a new area, you had to be aware of your surroundings and the enemies you were fighting and use the appropriate plasmids to lay traps and what not. Infinite mostly just had large open areas filled with enemies that you had to kill with… whatever. Again and again and again.

I didn't think Columbia had the charm, atmosphere and polish that Rapture did so well in the earlier games either. I also experienced some balancing issues with this game. I pretty much had my character maxed out in everything about halfway into the game and was mowing down anything in my way without much thought or effort.

Summary:
There’s so much more this game could have done with mixing up gameplay/artwork/music with their parallel dimensions theme too. A lot of lost potential. To its credit, the ending of this game was pretty cool though.