Rock Band 3

Harmonix/Backbone Entertainment - 2010 - X360/PS3/Wii/DS

(On my Top 10 Favorite Games list)

I'm a big fan of the rhythm game genre and in particular the Guitar Hero and Rock Band games. Now there hasn't been a release in either of these franchises since 2010. This fact, coupled with the decreasing sales and popularity of these franchises caused many people to speculate that these types of games were "dead". Then out of the blue, Harmonix announced Rock Band 4 and Activision followed suit with an announcement of Guitar Hero Live. Obviously neither of these franchises are dead (at least at the time of writing) and both have new games launching in the coming weeks, but I do think there are a few reasons we haven't heard from these games in five years. First and probably foremost was oversaturation. If you include the DJ Hero games and the various portable releases from each franchise, Harmonix and Activision combined to release thirty five Rock Band and Guitar Hero titles between 2005 and 2010. I'm serious. Check Wikipedia. The American economic downturn that occurred at the end of last decade certainly didn't do any good to either of these franchises that require players to buy relatively expensive accessories. Plus I think some players decided they didn't want to have ridiculous Fisher Price-looking plastic instruments cluttering their living space anymore. I think that last point still holds true in 2015, but there obviously hasn't been any oversaturation in a while and the U.S. economy is doing better which is why I think we're now seeing releases from these franchises. So what do I want to see from either Rock Band 4 or Guitar Hero Live? Let's take a dive into one of my all-time favorite rhythm games, Rock Band 3, and examine some of the things I think it does well and some of the things it does not so well.

Let's get the bad things with Rock Band 3 out of the way first. The game has obsession with realism and wanting the player to learn real instruments. This is fine when done well, and a game like Rocksmith really shows how this concept can be pulled off successfully. But Rockband 3's execution of this was way too complicated. Rock Band 3 introduced "Pro Mode" for guitar, drums, and its new keyboard accessory. Mad Catz partnered with Harmonix to sell a "pro guitar" with 102 plastic buttons. There wasn't really a great tutorial for this instrument, and the strange chord notation was almost impossible to interpret at the speed Rock Band throws notes at you. Especially for someone who has no actual experience playing guitar (me). This was the same problem with the "pro keyboard" which expected the player to play a 25 button mini-keyboard at full song speed. I actually liked the "pro drums", which added 3 cymbals to Rock Band's normal drumkit of 4 pads. I found it to be a welcomed challenge as opposed to an impossible one. But aside from the drums, I think the whole "pro mode" experiment was a failure, especially when you consider that none of the older DLC or other imported songs supported the pro guitar, and most didn't support the keyboard at all. They strangely did however, support pro drums. My speculation is that the songs were always encoded to differentiate between cymbals and drums, even though the original drum kits only had 4 pads. I think Harmonix has recognized this failure and has removed support for pro instruments and the keyboard peripheral entirely for Rock Band 4 although they will continue to support pro drums. 

The most awesome thing about Rock Band 3 is the massive library of DLC songs you have access to. If you include importable tracks from previous entries in the series, the total of playable songs is upwards of 4,000 which is pretty awesome especially assuming Harmonix makes this library available again for Rock Band 4. You can be practically guaranteed to find something you'll like when browsing the online store. Rock Band 3 also introduces vocal harmonies, allowing there to be more than one vocalist, provided you have more than one microphone. Tracks that support vocal harmonies will show separate vocal tracks with separate lyrics for each singer. Another new feature is the ability for players to drop in and out of songs on the fly without restarting a track. This, combined with the ability to make song playlists and enable "no-fail mode" made it very accessible as a casual party game. Rock Band 3 also features an expanded career mode and a more in depth character creator. All of these features combine to make Rock Band 3 a very full featured and well polished game

Rock Band 3 Video Review

Summary

Despite it's faults and it's misguided attempt to integrate playing "real" instruments, Rock Band 3 is still the most fun I've had playing rhythm party game. I've actually already played a pre-release build of Rock Band 4 at Pax and I think it captures all of the great things that Rock Band 3 did well. If people are willing to dust off their plastic instruments and hook them up to their next-gen consoles, I think Rock Band 4 should do just fine. I probably won't buy it initially as I don't even own a next-gen console yet, but I'm glad these franchises have been resurrected and I'm looking forward to eventually playing more fake plastic instruments.

Final Fantasy IX

Squaresoft - 2000 - PS1

(On my Top 10 Favorite Games list)

(On my Top 10 Game Soundtracks list)

See Also My Top 10 Final Fantasy Games List

After the more modern/sci-fi settings used in FF 6-8, Final Fantasy IX is a return to the series roots. It takes place in the world of Gaia, a world full of knights, mages, magic, and other traditional high fantasy. The story initially follows Zidane, who is a member of a band of thieves who is charged with kidnapping the princess Garnet of Alexandria kingdom. In a twist, Garnet is actually looking a discreet transport from Alexandria and consents to the kidnapping as it fits her own agenda. They are joined by Vivi, a young child black mage who is also accidentally kidnapped and knight captain Steiner who is Garnet's royal bodyguard and is loyal to his kingdom to a fault. The four are eventually joined by other party members and are swept up in adventure, conflict and conspiracy as tends to happen in Final Fantasy games. Also in continuing with trends in other Final Fantasy games, the plot does sort of take a dive off of the deep end at around disc 3 or so. Without getting too spoiler-y, the traditional fantasy setting does get strangely thrown out the window at some point, but the game is still worth playing if you appreciate good writing.

What sets this game apart from other Final Fantasy titles for me, aside from its setting, is its well written characters. Now those of you who have played other Final Fantasy games may be rolling your eyes at "well written characters", but I think it really applies to FFIX in a way that no other FF game before or since has achieved. The characters in FFIX aren't the flat, one-dimensional stereotypes of characters that are found in most JRPGs. There's also none of (or very little of) the angsty JRPG melodrama found in the rest of the series. The characters in FFIX are more subtle and nuanced which speaks volumes for not only the writers but the translation and localization process this game had to undergo. This game even has humor. Like legitimate, actual, intentional humor. And it works. Usually when humorous dialogue is written in a Final Fantasy game, it's facepalm material. It's funny, but for all the wrong reasons. FFIX gets it right in a way that really endears all of its characters to the player.

The battle system is... well... it's just fine. There's nothing really wrong with it. But there's also nothing really right with it either. There's nothing too broken like FFVIII, but also nothing that really sticks out and grabs your attention to make you want to keep playing just one more battle like FFVII. It's pretty straightforward and standard for a Final Fantasy game. It's pseudo turn based with the ATB introduced in previous games and your characters fit into pre-defined roles of black mage, white mage, summoner, knight, thief etc. Just about the only thing noteworthy is that all abilities you learn throughout the game are learned from using a specific weapon a certain number of times in battle. For instance, if you want to learn the "fire" spell, you have to equip Vivi with the "Fire Staff" or whatever it's called. This creates a sort of interesting dynamic where the weapons and armor you have equipped for your party may not always be the "best" speaking strictly statistically. There's also the new "limit break" system called trance, where your character becomes more powerful and gets access to new abilities, but this triggers pretty much just randomly and always seems to happen when you're in a random, easily winnable battle and never against a boss when you really need it. So yeah, the battle system is... just fine I guess.

What's way better than "just fine" and another notable reason to check out this game is another superb, phenomenal, varied and otherwise spectacular soundtrack composed by Uematsu. I think Uematsu has gone on record saying this was his favorite soundtrack he composed. It's not necessarily my favorite as a whole, but picking a favorite Uematsu soundtrack is like trying to pick a favorite burger off of the menu at Red Robin. I love them all. Standouts are the "Battle Theme", "Stirring in the Forest", "Crossing Those Hills", "Border Village Dali" and "Hunter's Chance" but the whole soundtrack is really a standout as tends to be the case with Nobou Uematsu.

Final Fantasy IX Video Review

Summary
It may not have the best battle system and the plot gets a little weird about halfway through, but FFIX is still worth checking out if you like a well written story with well defined characters. The writing and soundtrack are enough to carry you through when the battle system is being dull and the story is getting weird. This game really is pretty charming once you get invested in it and it's become one of my favorites in the Final Fantasy series and just in general

80 Days

Inkle - 2014 - Andriod/iOS

I've returned from my very first Pax Prime and it was amazing. I demoed Dark Souls 3, Final Fantasy XV, Mario Maker, Rock Band 4 and played many other indie games and met some of their developers. It was a really cool convention and I'd recommend it to anyone who's really interested in games as long as you don't mind long lines. One of the things I did to pass the time in these long lines, plane trips and other downtime was download and play a game called 80 Days.

80 Days is a game that re-imagines Jules Verne's classic 1873 novel "Around the World in 80 Days" as a choose your own adventure style video game. For those unfamiliar with the novel, the book tells the story of an Englishman named Phileas Fogg who makes a wager to the tune of 20,000 pounds that he can circumnavigate the globe in 80 days. In the game, you play the role of Phileas Fogg's valet, Passepartout, and you manage finances and make decisions on how to plot your route around the globe. The setting still takes place in the 1870s, but now everything is steampunk for some reason. It was kind of an odd creative choice to rewrite the world this way. It didn't do anything for me, but then again I've never understood the appeal of steampunk.

From a gameplay standpoint, this game is sort of like a cross between the Oregon Trail and maybe FTL, but it's more narrative focused than either of those games. It's really more of an interactive novel and it never really gets too "gamey". Most of your interaction will come through picking your character's dialogue from a few choices. It's probably the largest, most involved example of a choose your own adventure book. You can pick your destinations from a map kind of FTL style, but you have to weigh the pros and cons of each decision. Each route has a monetary cost, a time cost, and a "comfortability" cost. In addition to managing finances, you also have to keep an eye on Fogg's health which may start to decrease if you take wearisome routes, or don't stop to rest enough. You can also chat up strangers in each town which may unlock new routes or faster/cheaper routes on your map. Some conversations may even extend the narrative in a surprising way. Events in the game occur randomly as well, so each playthough is guaranteed to be different, even if you take the same routes through the same cities. This is perhaps 80 Days' most interesting feature, as it grants this game a high amount of replayability.

I can remember reading the novel in middle school, I think, and little bits and pieces of it came back to me as I was playing through the game. Most of the story is entirely new, and totally random and also based on the decisions you make, but there are lots of little winks and nods to the novel like the characters being very aware that traveling eastward with the sun vs. westward against the sun will gain them extra time (Spoiler alert for a 150 year old novel). It's a fairly well written game, which is good because there really isn't too much else about this game. The "gamey" parts of 80 Days feel somewhat ancillary to the story; they exist in more of a supporting role. The spotlight of 80 Days is on the story, not the gameplay

80 Days is a well written interactive novel, but it's a game that expects its players to draw enjoyment from its plot, so you might not care for this game if you come into it expecting a strong gameplay hook. At the very least, it's an interesting example of the concept of a choose your own adventure book taken to its absolute farthest point. I personally accomplished my journey around the globe in 68 days, easily winning Fogg's wager with ample time to spare. Check this game out if you'd like to experience your own version of Jules Verne's classic novel.

Dear Esther

The Chinese Room - 2012 (2008 Original) - PC

I've played a few of the games that are sometimes referred to dismissively as "walking simulators" by some. Journey and Proteus totally didn't connect with me while Gone Home came close. I thought The Stanley Parable was absolutely brilliant. Dear Esther, which probably can be credited with popularizing this genre, is no Stanley Parable but it did resonate more strongly with me than most of the other similar games I've played that fall into this grouping.

Dear Esther is a game about exploration. You explore an island by yourself and are occasionally accompanied by voiceover dialogue that elaborates on bits of the story. The story that is presented in the voiceovers is somewhat vague, and I'm pretty sure that was an intentional design decision. I later found out that on subsequent replays of Dear Ester, the bits of dialogue that play are actually randomly chosen, so you might hear one voiceover on one given playthough, but not on the next. Or vice versa. I'm okay with this decision to deliberately obfuscate the story, because I think you can piece together enough information from whatever dialogue is randomly chosen and combine that with the knowledge you gain by observing and exploring to come up with the gist of the story, even if some of its details are fuzzy. It's a game I found narratively similar to Dark Souls, of all games. While there may or may not be an absolute truth to Dear Esther's story, I found myself filling in the deliberate vagaries of the story with my own imagination, similar to what I had done in Dark Souls.

Dear Esther got its start in 2008 as a Half Life 2 mod, and was later re-released as a standalone game in 2012. I played the 2012 remake and found the audiovisuals to be top notch. Both hearing and seeing the wind rustling through the grass and the waves crashing on the shore really helped immerse me in this world in a way that none of the other "walking simulators" had done previously. I let my mind wander with the strange details of the story and tried to piece it together while simultaneously drinking in the high fidelity audiovisual presentation

Dear Esther Video Review

Summary
"Walking Simulators" are a pretty niche appeal. I think this game does it right though. High quality graphics and an interesting story were enough to keep me engaged throughout the experience, though I can definitely see those not used to this sort of thing finding it boring, or the vagueness of its story frustrating. It's definitely not one of my favorite games ever, but it's a neat experience if you're up for something different

Lethal League

Team Reptile - 2014 - PC

Lethal League is what would happen if you crossed baseball and dodgeball and then sprinkled in a little bit of Super Smash Bros. Sound crazy? It is a little bit. Allow me to elaborate: The point of Lethal League is to hit the opposing player(s) with the ball without getting hit yourself. The ball starts off slowly, then gains speed through continuous hits and bouncing off of the walls like in Pong or Arkanoid. You can alter the trajectory of your hits by holding the corresponding direction on the joystick when you hit the ball. You can greatly accelerate the ball's speed by jumping in the air and performing a "slam" which rockets the ball back down to the ground. Each of the 6 playable characters in the game have special traits and abilities that can alter the ball's velocity, timing or trajectory to fake out opposing players. The game can be played 1 vs. 1, 2 vs. 2 or free for all style, similar to Smash Bros.

This game also reminds me somewhat of Divekick. The game is very accessible, fun and easy to pick up and play, but I'm a little skeptical about it's long term playerbase retention. I confess I haven't played too much of this game, but I'm suspicious that Lethal League may not have the mechanical depth to keep players coming back for more. Even if it may be somewhat lacking in staying power, Lethal League is still a fun and fast-paced game to pick up and compete with friends or strangers online.

Also of note is the game's awesome soundtrack which falls musically somewhere between Hotline Miami and Jet Set Radio. Like Hotline Miami, the soundtrack is a compilation from several artists that still manages to have a unified sound. Of note is "Scream" by Bignic, "Ordinary Days" by Klaus Veen and "Urabon" by Grillo. I know I've said this before, but I love when game soundtracks have a unique sound like this. Not enough games do that.

Lethal League Video Review

Summary
Lethal League is a fun, fast-paced and accessible spin on the fighting game genre. I'm a little skeptical about this game's lasting depth, but you should play it yourself to decide where this falls on the scale between novelty and legitimate deep competition. At least I hope you'll be able to agree it has an awesome soundtrack

Her Story

Sam Barlow - 2015 - Mobile/PC

Her Story is a very unusual in that it's a full motion video game that was released in 2015. Don't worry, the FMV aspect of this game works really well, it's totally not cheesy and the actress in the game does a fairly decent job selling her performance. After you complete this game, it's hard to imagine Her Story not being a FMV game, I'm not sure it would have worked any other way. Her Story was made independently by Sam Barlow, who was previously the writer and designer of both Silent Hill Origins and Silent Hill Shattered Memories. This game, if you can even call it a game, shares a lot of the interesting ideas and creativity found in those Silent Hill titles

The premise of Her Story is that you are digging through a corrupted database of video interviews from a murder case in the early nineties. The database has been corrupted and fragmented, so you can't watch the interview clips in chronological order, but each video clip has been completely text transcribed, so you can search each clip by any word that occurs in the clip. So for instance, if you search "murder", all of the video clips that contain the word "murder" are returned to you. The other catch is that you can only see the first 5 results that are returned to you, so you'll quickly learn to be clever with your searches. 

The story opens up pretty quickly, giving you some names of important characters or important events to search, but the interesting thing here is that the story is presented totally non-linearly. Somehow though, through that I'm sure was many hours of playtesting and clever organization of what words occur in what clips, the story seems to unfold in just the right way, even if you watch the clips out of order. There's many cool twists and turns in the plot and figuring out whodunnit, how they did it and why they did it is really interesting and rewarding. There's no central gameplay mechanics here, only tracking the mystery in your head and coming up with terms to search then watching the video clips. So if you're looking for a gamey game, Her Story probably won't be your thing. But if you like a clever murder mystery presented in an unconventional fashion, you should totally check this game out

Her Story Video Review:

Summary

I really enjoyed Her Story, it was one of those experiences that keeps you thinking about it long after it's over. The story and its twists are clever and I enjoyed the unconventional presentation. If searching and watching video clips doesn't sound fun to you, you may want to steer clear of Her Story. But if you can let yourself get engrossed in the story and sorting out its mysteries, you'll have a fun time with this game

Dark Souls

FromSoftware - 2011 - PS3/PC/X360

I did it! Praise the sun! I've finished Dark Souls! Good Lord this game is mercilessly difficult. And also one of the best designed games I've ever played. If you've heard people tell you how good this game is, it's true. It's also no exaggeration how difficult this game is, so this is definitely not a game for everyone. I think if you're an seasoned gamer who's up for a challenge and you approach this game with patience and an open mind, you'll be able to discover the fun in building your character, experimenting with the game's systems, exploring the masterfully designed levels and discovering this game's hidden lore.

This game simultaneously does the best and worst job teaching mechanics I've seen in a video game recently.The Northern Undead Asylum where you begin the game serves as the game's tutorial. It teaches you how to move your character, to read messages on the floor, and that shiny things and bonfires are good. It teaches you how to defend with a shield by forcing you to walk down a narrow corridor with a guy on the far end shooting arrows at you. The only way you'll make it is learning to use the shield. It then throws a fairly difficult boss at you, teaching you that Dark Souls will be hard and that running away is a valid option and is sometimes the best one. You eventually have to kill the boss to complete the tutorial, but if you manage to scramble across the boss room before he kills you, a better weapon can be found and the game also gives you some hints for dealing more damage. The tutorial also teaches you what is probably Dark Souls' most important lesson which is that you cannot hack and slash your way through this game. You must pay attention to enemy attack animations, learn their tells, and understand when it's safe to attack them. It's an excellent tutorial for the game and teaches you all of Dark Souls' basic mechanics... but it doesn't address or teach its more complex mechanics at all. It's also easy to be overwhelmed by the spreadsheet of statistics presented to you on the player stats page, which isn't explained in detail. Dark Souls is a game that expects its players to learn its more complicated systems by experimentation or trial and error. Or just google everything, which is probably what most people do.

After completing the tutorial level, Dark Souls opens up quite a bit and becomes very non-linear for the rest of the game. You can take any path in any order you want, some paths are easier and intended to be taken first, some paths are harder and intended to be done later in the game, and some paths are completely optional and never required to finish the game. But you don't know which paths are which until you take them. Trial and error is another one of the design themes found throughout Dark Souls. Yes, it's frustrating at times, but the joy of exploring and discovering new paths or new secrets offsets the frustration of accidentally taking a path intended for later in the game and getting your butt kicked.

You can level up your character by spending the souls of the enemies you killed on upgrades while at a bonfire. If you die, you lose all of your accumulated souls, so you're encouraged to spend them often. Mercifully, if you can make it back to where you died, you can recover your lost souls, but dying twice in a row without recovery will see your unspent souls lost forever. It creates a sort of system where even when you're dying over and over again, you feel like you're making progress both through leveling up, and also by learning from deaths, memorizing enemy patterns and remembering level layouts. Progress in Dark Souls can be marked by killing bosses or discovering shortcuts that lead back to previously explored areas in the game, giving the game a bit of a metroidvania feel. You'll find that a lot of the weapons and armor in Dark Souls are not really statistically better or worse, just different. Some weapons may have comparable stats, but differing swing arcs or varying ranges. It's not so much a matter of finding the best weapons and armor in Dark Souls, but finding the ones that best suit your playstyle

There's also an ever-present multiplayer component to Dark Souls. You basically always play the game online, seeing ghostly glimpses of other players and reading the sometimes helpful, sometimes trolling messages left by them. You can also optionally opt-in to a cooperative multiplayer component to get assistance from another player to take down a difficult boss. The thing is, when you opt-in to the cooperative multiplayer, it also makes you susceptible to hostile PvP invasions from other players. It's a really cool mechanical tradeoff and another really smart design decision

The story of Dark Souls is communicated very unconventionally. Often NPCs will reveal very little about themselves or the world around them, so most of the narrative is communicated through environmental storytelling and also reading the item descriptions on new things you pick up. Don't be mistaken, there really is a lot of lore in Dark Souls, it's just hard to find and it's very open ended. The story purposely poses a lot of interesting unanswered questions and leaves it up to the player to fill in the gaps with their own imagination and interpretation of what happened.

Dark Souls Video Review

Summary
Dark Souls is probably the hardest game I've completed. It's also one of the best designed games I've played recently. If you can approach this game with a certain amount of patience and endurance, you'll really enjoy it. The feeling of finally killing that boss you've been stuck on is a feeling of reward that is unmatched in any other game. Even the little rewarding moments of finding a new weapon, or discovering a new shortcut or learning something new about the game's mechanics you didn't know before feels awesome. It's not for everyone, but the people who it IS for will find Dark Souls very enjoyable.

Final Fantasy VIII

Squaresoft - 1999 - PC/PS1

(On my Top 10 Game Soundtracks list)

See Also My Top 10 Final Fantasy Games List

Part of why I think this game gets so much hate, even from me, is that it came on the heels of Final Fantasy 7, of of the best selling and most well loved RPGs of all time. Final Fantasy 7 had a brilliant and customizable battle system, an engaging story with interesting characters and an awesome soundtrack. Final Fantasy 8 has... an awesome soundtrack, at least. To be fair, the story is pretty interesting all the way through the end of disc 1, but then things get so weird and hard to follow and major plot points are added and removed on a whim, as though the game has ADD and can't decide on what kind of story it wants to tell you. But the battle system is...oh god it's a total trainwreck.

So one of the many flaws of this game's battle system is its "junction" system. In FF8, magic spells are treated as a consumable item. Kind of a weird choice, but I don't have a problem with that necessarily. What I DO have a problem with is that spells are a consumable item AND the game allows you to "junction" them to your character to improve their stats. The better the spell, the more the stat increase. If you follow this chain of logic, you'll realize that if you have a high level spell junctioned to your character and you cast that spell, your character's stats will actually decrease. So then what's the point of casting magic? There is none in a normal playthrough, especially when you consider that your summon monsters, called GFs in this game, can be called upon to essentially cast any magic spells you'd want anyway, provided you don't mind watching a 45 second cutscene of the GF appearing EVERY FREAKIN' TIME. There's lots of odd decisions like this that slow the battles down in FF8 and make them tedious. Even the way you get magic is a chore. You can "draw" spells from an enemy, but depending on a few factors the game doesn't really explain, you'll only typically get around 3-6 spells per draw. Which means you have to sit in a battle and farm draw for quite a long time if you want to get up to the maximum of 100. But really the most broken thing about this game is when you discover you can manipulate limit breaks. Your character's chance of limit breaks are actually random in this game, another odd choice. The less health you have, the higher the chance of the limit break. But if you cycle your turn order, you can keep re-rolling the calculation that determines your limit break, essentially letting you limit break whenever you want. Totally. Broken.

Now that I'm done ranting about the battle system, on to the story (mild spoilers in this paragraph). It really does seem like it's gonna go somewhere for the first, maybe quarter or third of the game. But then we hit a point after disc 1 where the narrative has an identity crisis and starts grasping at different ideas and concepts and inserts them randomly into the story which results in a totally insane mish-mash of disconnected themes and gaping plot holes. I know Final Fantasy is a universe where characters get shot, sliced and burned in every battle, but the first huge narrative red flag is when one of the main characters is freakin' impaled through the heart with a giant icicle during a cutscene... and then is totally okay in the next scene. Like the game barely even acknowledges that it took place. Come on Final Fantasy 8! If you're not gonna take your story seriously then I can't either. 

The artwork and music are the huge redeeming factors of this game. FF8 features some of the most gorgeous hand-drawn backdrops in any RPG I've seen. And this might be controversial, but I think FF8 is Uematsu's best work. At the very least it's my favorite of his work. The relaxing "Breezy", the entrancing "Find Your Way", the mysterious "Under Her Control" and the nostalgic "Fisherman's Horizon" highlight the soundtrack. And of course "Man With the Machine Gun" does its best to keep the mindlessly tedious and broken battles from being too much of a nuisance.

Summary

This is far from the best Final Fantasy, and misses the mark on battle system design and storytelling. At best it's an average-ish RPG with a trippy story, some awesome music and inspiring artwork. Still there is something sort of intangibly alluring about playing this game. I must admit I've replayed this trainwreck at least 3 times now.

Mario Kart 8

Nintendo - 2014 - WiiU

I haven't quite figured out the difference between Nintendo and Activision. Why is it that Nintendo can continue remaking the same games over and over again and garner praise and fan worship while Activision is demonized for doing the same thing while running its franchises into the ground? (See Guitar Hero, Tony Hawk Pro Skater, Call of Duty). Is it the amount of effort/quality put in to each sequel? Is it the time between releases? Like it or hate it, I think Nintendo has perfected the art of iterative remakes and have applied their remaking expertise on the latest Mario Kart

So what's new in Mario Kart 8? It's the first Mario Kart game in true HD, and it looks very pretty. The new instant replay feature is a nice addition, but the touted hover-karts are mostly a gimmick with no really interesting affects on gameplay. If you include DLC, MK8 boasts the highest number of playable characters and the highest number of courses in any Mario Kart game. Priced reasonably at $7.99, the MK8 DLC pack includes 3 new characters. 4 new vehicles and 8 new tracks. The MK8 DLC is nice, high quality DLC done the right way. There's also the free 200cc DLC which unlocks mirror mode and the uncomfortably fast 200cc mode for those who enjoy an extra challenge.

Kart customization plays a big role in MK8. When selecting your vehicle, you must pick a body type,  a size (small, med, large), a set of tires, and a glider. All of these decisions have an effect on your kart's stats which can be viewed by pressing the start button while customizing your vehicle. I've found that having a good kart build that comfortably suits your playstyle can determine your success in MK8.

So I'm a big fan of Mario Kart 64 and its battle mode in particular. I think most Mario Kart fans would agree that Nintendo hasn't come close to reproducing the brilliance of the MK64 battle mode in any Mario Kart title since, and Mario Kart 8 is no exception. The implementation seems especially lazy in MK 8. They've just copy/pasted some courses verbatim from the racing mode and send some players forward and some players backward on the track which gives a sort of jousting with items feel. Except the courses are WAY too big to make it exciting. When you do finally find an opponent, you just sort of circle around the items and hope you get something good to finish them off. It just doesn't feel right at all. It doesn't have that "thrill of the hunt" feel that is given by the MK 64 tracks that were tailor made for battle mode like Block Fort or Double Deck. MK 8 battle mode is one of those things you try with your friends and then go "eehhh, let's never do that again".

Mario Kart 8 Video Review

Summary
Mario Kart 8 has the biggest roster of playable characters, the largest selection of tracks and is the prettiest looking Mario Kart game yet. The DLC is reasonably priced and packs a lot of bang for the buck. It's a shame the battle mode is total garbage. If Nintendo released a proper battle mode DLC pack, I would buy it in a heartbeat and Mario Kart 8 would likely replace Mario Kart 64 as my all time favorite Mario Kart game.

Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number

Dennaton Games - 2015 - PC/PS3/PS4/Vita

I was waiting until after I finished this game to review it - which I had intended to be a few weeks or so after its release, but that obviously didn't happen. So I've been playing this game on and off trying to get past the part I'm stuck on and you know what? This game is really freaking hard and I don't think I can finish it. At least not right now. So disclaimer: I'm reviewing a game I didn't complete

I could probably be super lazy with this review and just say "It's more Hotline Miami" and in most ways, that's very true. But I'm going to try to be just a bit more insightful and try to highlight some of the differences between this game and its predecessor. First off, the gameplay. It plays largely very similarly to the first game, but you'll notice some differences in level design. Some of Hotline Miami 2's levels are a lot more wide open, which was something that was not really present in the first game. Because of this, I found it much more important to use the camera to look around to see if an enemy is lurking off screen. This becomes kind of annoying, especially when off-screen enemies start shooting you from unseen locations. Nearly every level in Hotline Miami 2 features a different playable character with slightly different abilities, similar to the mask system in the first game. But the player can't change out and experiment with abilities and playstyles when they want to, like in the first game. Levels in Hotline Miami 2 are also generally much longer than the first game. This makes an already hard game that much harder and that much more frustrating when you're killed near the end of the level and forced to start again. It wasn't that big of a deal in the first game, as it was more about the thrill of memorizing relatively short levels and then executing them perfectly. The longer levels in the second game greatly slow it down and make it feel like more of a chore.

(Mild spoilers in this paragraph) The narrative in the first Hotline Miami game was definitely a little open to interpretation. The first half of Hotline Miami saw the player character, "Jacket" slaughtering buildings full of people because a voice on his telephone told him to. The second half of the game (if you follow Jacket's storyline) saw Jacket killing with a purpose instead, tracking down and killing off the people who killed his girlfriend. Many people viewed the story as a commentary on violence in video games, and discussed how killing for no reason vs. the player character killing with a purpose felt the same/different. I admired how Hotline Miami's story could be viewed through many lenses and how the vagueness of the story left it open for the players' imaginations to fill in the gaps. Hotline Miami 2's story has a similar vagueness, but it's compounded by each level being played by a different character and then each level also being told chronologically out of order. I just couldn't even follow what was supposed to be happening. The story seemed like some crazy blur of violence, neon lights, pounding music and confusion. Maybe that's what the developers were going for?

The soundtrack in Hotline Miami 2 is still very much on point. It's still a collaboration of many different artists, even more than the first game, that have somehow banded together to make a unified sound. Most of the first game's musical authors have returned to contribute fresh tracks, but I loved contributions from new artists as well. A few of my favorites are "Divide" by Magna, "Blizzard" by Light Club, and "The Way Home" by Magic Sword. The entire soundtrack is solid from top to bottom and is worth a listen if you like this sort of electronic/techno music.

Summary
I didn't care for the minor changes in gameplay and story but despite all of my above griping, Hotline Miami 2 is still a solid game. Fans of the first game should still enjoy its sequel, but if you haven't played Hotline Miami before, start with the first one. It's the superior game

DOTA 2

Valve - 2013 - PC

This is a bit of a strange review as I'm not sure who my target audience is. I feel like most people who have heard of DOTA 2 are quite aware of what it is and already know whether or not they like it. Similarly, I feel like the gamers who have somehow managed to not have heard of the massively popular DOTA 2 are also probably the people who either won't like or won't care about this game. So let me preface this review with a few disclaimers: First of all, I'm not being critical of DOTA 2 due to some MOBA bias. I realize both DOTA 2 and League of Legends are currently both massively popular and players of each game tend to have strong opinions about which is better. I don't care. I'm completely apathetic towards both games. Secondly, it should probably be known that I'm not very good at DOTA 2. Like at all. I've probably played maybe 4 or 5 games of DOTA 2 total, but it's enough to know that this is not a game for me.

So for those who aren't aware, the basic rules of a multiplayer online battle arena or MOBA are that two competing teams of players are pushing towards some sort of team goal which is usually the capture or destruction of the enemy team's base. There are also usually strong RPG elements to the game where players will have to level up to improve and strengthen their character. This can be done both by killing players on the enemy team which is risky, but rewarding or also by killing weaker non playable characters known in the MOBA communities as "creep". Character choice plays an important role in MOBAs as most characters have vastly varying strengths, weaknesses, statistics, abilities and playstyles. Ideally, teams will consist of complimentary characters and playstyles to create a strong and versatile team. Some MOBAs have further in-match customization of characters through equippable items, weapons, or armor

I love competitive games with a lot of depth, strategy and skill, so several of my friends have recommended this game to me many times. I don't deny that DOTA 2 has a ton of depth, demands a lot of high level thinking and strategy and also requires a fair amount of actual technical skill to be good. These are the aspects of DOTA 2 that appeal to me and make me want to play the game. But it comes in a wrapper that includes so many other aspects that I don't care for. The biggest and most off-putting aspect of DOTA 2 is the community. The DOTA 2 community is notoriously hostile and unwelcoming towards new players, which I am one of. I mean, I kind of understand the problem. It's a team game and people want to win. No one wants to play with a team member who doesn't know what they're doing. The other problem is match length. A typical game of DOTA can last upwards of 45 minutes. Finding 45 consecutive uninterrupted minutes is a lot to ask of my free time. That's not even counting the time spend waiting for other players to join and queue up the game. I like the freedom of starting and stopping my games on my own time.

The final and maybe most fixable problem is the immense barrier of entry to this game. There's a ton of game mechanics, item functions and matchup knowledge to learn before you can start to really compete in this game. Any good game has a learning curve, but I found DOTA's tutorial to be buggy and uninformative. During one part of the tutorial, my character got stuck on a bridge and was unable to move. Then a later section of the tutorial was uncompletable for me because the game wouldn't detect when I bought the correct items from the shop, then I ran out of gold. The character specific player guides didn't seem that helpful unless you were already comfortable with the basic mechanics and terminology of the game. DOTA 2 has an assumed set of knowledge from its users that brand new players don't and won't have. Even the UI seems clunky and unintuitive to me. It took me 5 minutes just to figure out how to leave a game. I'm sure if I was really driven to learn this game by myself, I could look past some of these flaws, but I just don't want to put in the time to learn a game I don't think I'll have fun with

Summary
I know I'm being harsh on a popular and well-liked game, but it's not for me. A hostile community, long play sessions and a nightmarishly large learning curve will likely bar me from playing this game indefinitely. On the bright side though, it's free to play. So try it yourself and make up your own mind as to whether DOTA 2 is worth your time investment

Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze

 Retro Studios (Nintendo) / Monster Games - 2014 - WiiU

(On my Top 10 Game Soundtracks list)

I grew up with the Donkey Kong Country games and am a huge fan. When Donkey Kong Country Returns came out in 2010, I was super excited to see the franchise revived after nearly a 15 year absence. But I was ultimately pretty dissapointed with that game mostly due to control scheme problems. It was back when every Wii game was obliged to shoehorn in Wii Remote waggling of some sort or another, so DKC:Returns forced you to shake the controller every time you want to roll. It was just awful. A simple design decision made what would have been an otherwise pretty good platformer nearly unplayable for me. I found a downloadable hack online that patched in the ability to map the controller shaking to a button, so I'd recommend Googling for it if you want to go back and play DKC: Returns because that game is fundamentally broken out of the box. The egregious controller shaking was unforgivable, but I noticed another small problem with DKC:Returns. It had a bit of an identity problem. It was a decent platformer with some admittedly pretty good level design, but it didn't really feel like a Donkey Kong Country game. Where were the Kremlings? Where were all the animal buddies other than Rambi? Where was the amazing head rocking music I was used to from previous entries? Sure it featured Donkey Kong characters, but the soul of the game was stripped away. For a game titled "Donkey Kong Country Returns", it didn't really feel like the franchise HAD actually returned.

So now onto Tropical Freeze. The first thing it does right is provide support for other control schemes. There is still Wii Remote waggling, but you don't have to do it if you play with either the WiiU gamepad or pro controller. Hallelujah!! This automatically makes the game much more enjoyable. The game also looks gorgeous in HD. The visuals were always so striking in DKC games, even on the SNES so it was nice to see some TLC paid to the backgrounds and artwork. The next thing you'll notice is the soundtrack. David Wise, the main composer of the SNES trilogy, has returned to the franchise to pump some soul back into it. I'll talk about him later, but what really made this a Donkey Kong Country game for me was a simple animation. Dixie Kong's falling/sliding animation. It's an animation that's rarely ever seen in either Tropical Freeze or the SNES DKC games, but it plays when Dixie is sliding down a surface. She sticks her arms and legs straight up and flails them around in the air. Again, it's a silly animation rarely ever used, but as soon as I saw it, it made me smile. It's the little polish developers can apply that make die-hard fans like myself feel at home in the franchise. No, there's still no Kremlings or animal buddies other than Rambi. But Tropical Freeze is a Donkey Kong Country game.

Dixie Kong is back from DKC 2/3! And Cranky Kong is now a playable character! Each Kong has their own special abilities. Diddy retains his jetpack hover from DKC:Returns and can now use it underwater to swim super quickly. Dixie makes Diddy somewhat obsolete with her hair flutter which carries the player higher/father in the air than Diddy's jetpack. Cranky Kong, my new favorite Kong, can pogo bounce on enemies and over spikes with his cane a la Duck Tales. Choosing which Kong to accompany you on a level is a new interesting decision as certain levels are tailored to certain Kong's abilities. Each level has been designed perfectly for speed running and platform and enemy placement is done just so basting through at full speed is possible if you have enough skill. Another speedrunner-friendly addition is then inclusion of replays. When you finish a level, you can post your replay online for friends/challengers to see. You can also view the replays of the top speed runs for a given level to see how it was actually possible to complete it in 43 seconds or whatever. This was a pretty cool addition. And don't let the cutsey Nintendo mascots fool you. This game is hard. Old-school hard. And if the normal levels aren't hard enough for you, you can find all of the K-O-N-G letters in each world to unlock bonus levels that are obnoxiously hard. I have only been able to finish one of the bonus levels so far. And I'm pretty darn good at this game.

Can we talk about the genius of David Wise for a second? When I heard he was back to work on the Tropical Freeze soundtrack, I was super pumped. Listening to the soundtrack was what actually made me want to play this game. The original tracks are awesome - Windmill Hills, Deep Keep and Fruity Factory. And the remix tracks are awesome too - Current Capers (Remix of DKC Aquatic Ambience), Irate Eight Chase (Remix of DKC2 Lockjaw's Saga) and Twilight Terror (Remix of DKC2 Stickerbrush Symphony). I actually think I like that cover of Stickerbrush Symphony better than the original. And I love the Original. If you like video game music or David Wise's work, I'd encourage you to listen to the whole soundtrack. There's lots of musical variety and it's absolutely phenomenal.

Video Review of DKC: Tropical Freeze

Summary
Tropical Freeze is the true return of the Donkey Kong Country franchise. A game with tight controls (yay!), excellent level design, striking visuals and rocking music are what you'll find here. If you're a fan of challenging platformers, speedrunning or excellent audiovisual presentation, you'll enjoy Tropical Freeze. It's a fun game to play cooperatively as well.

Ori and the Blind Forest

Moon Studios - 2015 - PC/XboxOne

You may remember this game from its brief demo at E3 last year (2014) where a white squirrel thing was shown jumping through beautiful scenery. It was one of the most visually memorable trailers I saw at E3 last year. And I'm happy to report the game is just as strikingly beautiful as its trailer. Ori and the Blind forest is a Metroidvania style platformer and is the first game from indie developer Moon Studios. I suspect Moon Studios is comprised of at least a couple industry veterans as this game is beautiful, very well designed and oozes quality.

Before being published by Microsoft, Ori and the Blind Forest was developed in the Unity engine over the course of four years. Moon Studios cited the Rayman and Metroid franchises as influences for these games, and that's immediately obvious in both the high quality artwork (Rayman) and gameplay (Metroid). I'm personally a big fan of Metroidvania style gameplay, but since the Metroid series is somewhat MIA right now and Castlevania seems to be content making God of War clones, I've had to turn to other games like Ori to get my Metroidvania fix

If you've never played a Metoidvania style game before, the game is usually set in a large, non-linear game world with an emphasis on exploration and finding secrets. They often feature some sort of blend of platforming and combat, and often have light RPG elements where you can progress and improve your player character. Ori chooses to go somewhat light on the combat aspect (most enemies can be defeated by simply mashing the attack button), but instead focus most of the difficulty in the game around platforming. I didn't find the combat in this game that engaging or challenging at all, but there were a few segments that demanded perfect execution of precision platforming in a limited amount of time and messing up required repeating the entire platforming segment. It never felt TOO frustrating, but it was close.

Aside from this game's striking visuals, the first unique thing I noticed about it is that Ori will let you save nearly anywhere you like and at any time you like, provided there are no enemies nearby and you also have enough "spirit energy", which this game uses as currency for saving. Since the player can save anywhere and anytime they wish, Ori is free to ramp up the difficulty of the platforming to a pretty high level and also introduce enemies and hazards that can kill you in one hit. But it never feels unfair because you only lose as much progress since you last saved. I found I had enough spirit energy to comfortably save about every 30 seconds. It's kind of the Super Meat Boy effect. The game is quite difficult and you'll die often, but it never becomes too frustrating or feels too unfair because you only lose about 5-10 seconds of progress and then the game immediately brings you right back to try again.

Ori and the Blind Forest Video Review

Summary 
If you like Metroid or Castlevania styled games, or games like Guacamelee!, for instance, you may want to give Ori a try. Or if you dig really artsy and visually striking games, Ori also applies. I really enjoyed my time with Ori and the Blind Forest and am looking forward to see what's next from Moon Studios

Rayman Legends

Ubisoft - 2013 - PC/PS3/PS4/Vita/WiiU/X360/XboxOne

If you're looking for excellent platformers, or great couch co-op experiences, the WiiU is the next-gen console you want. To me, what sets the WiiU apart from any of the other next gen consoles are its tablet and its first-party games. The first-party games for WiiIU are the high level of quality you'd expect from Nintendo. Mario Kart 8 and Smash 4 are great and Super Mario 3D world is the best Mario game I've played to date. But I've noticed Nintendo doesn't really know how to implement its own tablet into its own first-party games. Mario Kart 8 simply maps the touch screen to a horn, Smash 4 only uses it to duplicate what's on the TV screen while Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze opts to turn the tablet screen completely off. None of these are inherently bad designs, but it's curios to see Nintendo stumped about what to do with its own hardware. Sure, Mario 3D World does have some light uses of the tablet where occasionally the game will require you to touch some block or something. But nothing like Rayman Legends. I know this game is on a plethora of other platforms, but you NEED to play the WiiU version of this game that utilizes all of the functionality of the WiiU tablet. I'm sure the developers would agree. I also hope Nintendo developers have played this game and are taking notes on how to properly utilize the gamepad.

The beauty of playing this game with the WiiU gamepad comes into play when there's at least more than one player playing the game. One player can play with a Wii Remote or Pro controller and plays through the platforming in a traditional fashion while the other player plays with the tablet screen and is tasked with helping the platforming player progress through levels. This is accomplished by touching to move and slide walls or platforms on the tablet screen or by keeping the platforming player safe by tapping to tickle monsters or by deflecting projectiles away from hitting the platforming player. It seems like each level has a new and inventive use of the tablet's touch screen that made playing each level fun and fresh. Neither the tablet player nor the platforming player are performing the same set of actions either, but both sets of actions are necessary for the level to be completed. This type of asynchronous gameplay experience is especially well implemented in Rayman Legends and requires both the tablet player and the platforming player to work together as a team to solve puzzles and complete the level. This, to me, is also why the definitive version of Rayman Legends can only be played on the WiiU and is probably best played with a partner.

Another thing that sets Rayman Legends apart from other platformers is its use of music. I've seen it before in other games where some background elements will move or dance in time with the music, but Rayman Legends takes this to another level. A lot of Rayman Legends levels require you to actually do platforming actions in time with music. If what I'm describing doesn't make sense, check out this video. But if you do, it may detract from the joy of discovering Rayman Legend's musical levels for yourself for the first time. The musical levels were so cool and I'd love to see this concept implemented in other platformers or even other game genres

Rayman Legends Video Review

Summary
Rayman Legends is one of the best platformers I've played in a long time and I'm enjoying seeing this resurgence of platformers and couch co-op experiences on the WiiU. The WiiU version of Rayman Legends also makes great use of the WiiU gamepad to implement a fun asynchronous co-op experience for both players. The music levels are wonderful and the game does have a great soundtrack in its own right too. Oh and it even features some of the best levels taken from Rayman Origins too! This is a great game and a must-play if you like platformers, co-op play, excellent music and art direction, or creative implementation of asynchronous gameplay

Pokemon Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire

Game Freak - 2014 - 3DS

After Gold/Silver, I had taken a pretty long break from the Pokemon franchise until two years ago when I picked up Pokemon X/Y for my 3DS on its release. I thought X/Y was a decent enough game, I liked the 3D models, enhancements to the battle system (especially the Exp. ALL given at the very beginning of the game) and finally the integration of Pokemon trading over the internet. I criticized the extremely weak story writing and the laughably easy difficulty. Like I said before, I thought it was a decent Pokemon game and a good first foray into the 3D environment for the franchise, but it didn't really rekindle the love I had for the series when I had played Red/Blue or Gold/Silver as a kid. I wasn't even planning on playing Omega Ruby or Alpha Sapphire until my girlfriend suggested it was something she was interested in and thought we could play through them together. I figured I would pick it up, play through the first few gyms with her and then most likely forget about it as there are so many other games I've been playing recently. Quite the opposite happened. At the time of this writing, I have completed the game a mere couple weeks after picking it up while my girlfriend has moved on to other games. I could feel the "One more battle" addiction that I had as a kid returning while I was also simultaneously fighting off the "Gotta catch 'em all" compulsion.

Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire (ORAS) aren't really totally new Pokemon games, they're really more 3D upgrades or re-imaginings of the 2002 Ruby and Sapphire Game Boy Advance games. Before playing ORAS, I had previously thought I had never played the old Ruby and Sapphire versions, which was mostly true, but as I began playing I realized I had casually played Pokemon Emerald on an emulator back in college. Emerald was a 2003 pseudo sequel/remake to Ruby and Sapphire the same way that Pokemon Yellow was a sequel/remake of Red/Blue. So faint memories of playing the original began returning even though the new game is in 3D and features new Pokemon and all that. The events and story of the original are mostly intact, although my memory of this game is admittedly quite fuzzy, while the battle system and mechanics have been upgraded to match X/Y and also include all of the new X/Y pokemon. You can actually transfer over all of your Pokemon from X/Y using Nintendo's Pokemon Bank software, but there is of course a $5 fee charged to use this service which I shamefully admit I paid for. Gotta catch 'em all, I suppose.

ORAS isn't the same giant leap forward for the franchise the same way X/Y was with new graphics and features and game modes, but it does polish what X/Y did very nicely. The difficulty curve in ORAS feels much more adequate and I found I wasn't constantly annihilating opposing Pokemon trainers in my way, but at the same time it's not exactly what I would describe as a difficult RPG. There are a few new features they've added to the game which were pretty cool. The first of which, called "DexNav", makes it possible to spot wild Pokemon in the grass before even entering a battle with them. This is really nice for completionists like myself who want to guarantee an encounter with a specific Pokemon instead of wandering around back and forth in the grass, just hoping to encounter that one rare Jigglypuff or whatever it is you're looking for. They've also finally made a 3D model of the world map that you can optionally soar around in when you use the HM move "Fly", but this isn't as interesting as you might think. I didn't find the 3D world map model to be that detailed or interesting and, in practice, you'll find that this mode is just a less convenient version of picking your destination off of the 2D map. They've also added a ton more mini-games to play with your Pokemon that improve their base stats or improve their happiness value, but I have no idea what the latter even matters.

Summary
Pokemon ORAS is a pretty cool re-imagining of the original Ruby and Sapphire games which are now nearly 15 years old believe it or not. If you're a fan of the original Ruby and Sapphire versions, you won't be disappointed with this remake. If you're a new fan and looking for an entry point to the series on the 3DS, I'd recommend ORAS over X/Y. A slightly more interesting story, further refinements and additions to the pokemon gameplay, more mega evolutions, and a better balanced and more challenging difficulty gives these games the clear edge in my book. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to finish the "delta episode", which is apparently some new end-game story they've added on.

The Talos Principle

Croteam - 2014 - PC

Not to be confused with one of the Gods of Skyrim, The Talos Principle is a philosophically themed puzzle game and has nothing to do with any of the Elder Scrolls games. Released late last year (2014), The Talos Principle was made by a small European development studio based in Croatia whose only previous notable works are the Serious Sam games. Being a puzzle game, The Talos Principle is a huge departure from the FPS style of the Serious Sam games so I was expecting this title to maybe be a little rough around the edges and maybe expose the inexperience of the development team making a game in a new style, but this was not the case at all. The Talos Principle is air tight, and features some of the best puzzle design and well executed narrative I have ever experienced in a video game.

The game begins as your player character wakes up in a seemingly abandoned garden. Between the lines of computer text scrolling across the screen or the occasional glimpse of your own metallic fingers, you'll quickly realize that your player character is a robot. Your unnamed character soon begins to hear a voice in his head. The voice refers to himself as Elohim (Hebrew for God) and starts referring to you as "my child". But not really in the typical motherly/fatherly parental way; the voice refers to you as "my child" the same way a God would address his creation. The voice then guides you around the garden and asks you to solve various puzzles to obtain "sigils", which will unlock more areas of the garden which will allow you to collect more sigils

The structure of the game is broken down into solving puzzles, obtaining sigils, reading pieces of story text and then repeating the process. This structure and repetitive pacing of The Talos Principle might be the only complaint someone could have against it, unless you don't care for difficult puzzles, which this game definitely has. I've often criticized games for being too repetitive and not offering enough variety of gameplay, but I never really got that feeling from this game. Even though it was a very lengthy (about 40 hours) puzzle game, I never felt like it outstayed its welcome. There was enough variety in the puzzle rooms and with the methods used to solve the puzzles that I never got the sense that I was doing the same thing over and over. The Talos Principle felt like a longer version of Braid, but 3D and with different puzzle mechanics. It's what I'd imagine The Witness would play like, if it ever gets released. I really can't stress enough the brilliance of in the design of the puzzle rooms here. The Talos Principle introduces puzzle elements, makes sure you understand how they work, then slowly increases the difficulty and complexity of the puzzles. Some of the later puzzles required me to just stop and stare at the screen and think. I love when games can get me to do that.

The Talos Principle Video Review

Summary

I know we're still very early in 2015 and also this game came out in December 2014, but The Talos Principle will more than likely be my 2015 game of the year. I was totally blown away by the superb puzzle design and the amazing presentation of the story. There's so much about the story I didn't want to reveal here for fear of spoilers, but exploring the island and finally uncovering its secrets felt really rewarding. The Talos Principle is everything I want in a video game. I would highly recommend it to fans of puzzle games or people who enjoy excellent game design

The Jackbox Party Pack

 Jackbox Games - 2014 - PC/PS3/PS4/XboxOne

Being the giant trivia nerd that I am (I attend trivia at a local bar nearly every week), I was eager to try the video game version of the You Don't Know Jack party game. I had heard positive buzz about the game and that it combined good trivia questions with excellent writing and a silly sense of humor, which I found to be true. I saw the 2015 edition of the You Don't Know Jack game on a steep sale in the Steam store, but it came bundled with a bunch of other games from the You Don't Know Jack developers. I wanted to play You Don't Know Jack and figured the other games were probably just throw away titles that the developers shoved in with You Don't Know Jack, but I was pleasantly surprised to be mostly wrong. This will be a bit of an unusual review since I'll be covering five games at once, but I'll try to give my opinion on the package of games as a whole and then some quick thoughts on each game in the package.

Each of the games in the Jackbox Party Pack assumes that all players in the room have either a smartphone or tablet or laptop or some other internet-enabled device. Each player uses their internet device, usually a smartphone, to connect to a web app and enter a "room code" which links the game together with the other devices and players in the room. Depending on which game in the pack you're playing, each player will submit either answers to questions, or drawings or whatever data is required for the game through their smartphone. I was actually quite surprised and impressed with how responsive the web app was when submitting data from my phone. There was almost no delay at all. It's a kind of neat strategy of utilizing the smartphones people likely already have as input devices and displaying the other game information on the main TV screen. I hope to see more party games integrate with smartphones since it's often hard to play video games with really large groups of people since controllers are usually limited.

You Don't Know Jack 2015 Edition

Likely the most recognizable game in the pack, You Don't Know Jack 2015 edition was the first game I played. It was pretty much exactly what I was expecting: good trivia questions delivered with silly humor. I thought the humor was a little hit and miss. When the writing was funny, it was funny. But when the jokes didn't land, they definitely did not land. The trivia questions were difficult, but still fair. If you weren't too familiar with the question category, I found it kind of hard to contribute since the game penalizes you for wrong answers. But if you like trivia and enjoy questions delivered with a crude sense of humor, you'll enjoy You Don't Know Jack

Fibbage

If you've ever played the party game Balderdash, you'll find Fibbage very familiar. In Fibbage, you're presented an incomplete sentence about weird fact and it's up to you to fill in the blank. Then everyone's answers are displayed on screen and you have to guess which is the actual true answer. You usually want to try to be as tricky as possible answer submissions, since points are awarded if your opponents guess your false answer as the correct one.

Drawful

Probably my favorite game in the pack, Drawful is pretty much the same concept as Fibbage, but with drawings. You'll be given a wacky subject that you'll have to make a drawing of. Once your drawing is complete, it's displayed on screen for all to see. Your opponents have to come up with fake answers for the title of your drawing while also trying to figure out what your drawing is actually about. There's a lot of fun to be had with this one, since the names of the drawings given to you are often crazy. Then add in the fact that all players are drawing on their phones with their fingers. This results in the drawings usually ending up being totally ridiculous. Then guessing who made what with your friends and figuring out what the real titles are while sifting out the hilarious fake title submissions is a great recipe for fun.

Word Spud

This one's fun, but you'll probably only play it once or twice. You'll be given a starting word, then a randomly selected player has to make a compound word or phrase from the initial word by adding another word. For example, the starting word might be "Video", to which a player might add "Game". Then another random player would be given "Game" and be expected to add another word to it. After each submission, all players can vote on whether to accept or reject the new word. If the word is accepted, the chain continues, otherwise a new random word is generated. The fun here is thinking quickly to come up with words to complete a clever or funny phrase. At the end of the game, which usually lasts a few minutes or so, Word Spud will show you your entire word chain which when read out loud is usually worth a few laughs. 

Lie Swatter

Probably the weakest game in the pack, lie swatter presents a true/false trivia question and awards points for the most correct answers. This is probably the most simple and least creative game in the pack, but it's also playable by up to 100 people at a time, so this might be the way to go if you have a really large group of people. 

Summary

I've been having a really great time with the Jackbox Party Pack. It's great to put up on the TV when I have more people over than I do controllers for traditional video games. You Don't Know Jack is fun for when you want to show off your random knowledge while being amused with crude jokes. Drawful was the surprise hit of the pack for me, easily providing hours of hilarious entertainment. Fibbage and Word Spud are midly enteraining, while Lie Swatter felt like a shoe-in. But if you often host large-ish groups of people (5-8) and are looking for video games to play, I would still highly recommend the Jackbox Party Pack