My goal (not resolution, mind you) for this year is to play more of the weird titles I've picked up in bundles and deals over the last 5 years, so I've spent the last couple weeks experiencing some pretty weird shit, along with some big name stuff.
THE GOOD
Fallout 4
Same as most of you, probably. Played for 80 hrs, got to level 46, got the badguy ending, stopped playing. I could go on at incredible length about the pros and cons of the game but in the end I clearly enjoyed it, I played it for 80 fucking hours in two weeks. I will say this, though, I hated myself the whole time. Not ME me, but the ingame character me. What a fucking loser I am. 8.75/10
Downwell
EXCELLENT action-roguelite vertical scrolling shooter (vertical as in down) with pixel graphics in a variety of style (the initial pallete is black, white and red but you unlock new ones) with persistent elements. The controls are amazingly tight, the gameplay is surprisingly addictive and the difficulty is unsurprisingly high. You're a guy that jumps down a hole and fights to the bottom of a pit using only his "gunboots." Lots of upgrades, decent level and enemy variety, incredibly addictive. 8.5/10
Mercenary Kings
Interesting sidescrolling shooter, pretty much an open-world Metal Slug with crafting. Surprisingly easy to pick up and play. Recommended for fans of Metal Slug that wished the game lasted more than 2 hrs or whatever. Can be a little repetitive (you play through the same levels multiple times with different objectives) but your ability to control your upgrades (armor, knife, 'biomods', and a gun composed of 5 or so individual parts) keeps it kinda fresh. Probably gets really hard (I only got maybe 10% in so far) but still worth a look. Also available on console. 8.5/10
Rebel Galaxy
A very fun space combat/trading game that plays wonderfully with a controller. Despite quite unrealistically taking place on a single plane (ie, there is no z-axis/vertical movement) the combat is satisfying (and comparable to the ship to ship combat in Assassin's Creed 3 and 4). 6 hrs in I haven't left the first area but I've upgraded my ship 4 times, and my onboard systems probably twice that any times. Kinda similar to Elite if it didn't take 20 hrs to make enough to buy a new ship. The soundtrack bears mentioning, its some weird scifi/country/metal hybrid, and it's pretty good, but there's only 8 tracks or so and they WILL get old. 8.5/10
Card Hunter
Surprisingly good F2P browser based strategy roleplaying game with a really really cool 1st Ed DnD art style. The combat revolves around playing cards, and the cards in your deck are determined by your equipped items. There is clearly a bit of play to win chicanery but I had several hours of fun with it without paying a dollar (and then got the Starter Set, 14$ value, for a couple cents in a bundle); paying money gives better quest rewards and access to other areas. I am mostly opposed to this kind of thing but I can't help but like Card Hunter. 7.5/10
Finding Teddy
Minimalist pixel graphics point'n'click adventure game about a little girl that travels into a fantasy world through her wardrobe in search of her teddy bear (which was stolen by a giant spider). Fun, not too difficult (unless you're an achievement completionist), some cool musical puzzles and some really brutal death scenes. Nothing special but an enjoyable diversion and I think it's on mobile as well. 7.5/10
Hand of Fate
I really like this game. It's a unique hybrid of several genres: levels are created randomly using cards from a deck that is predetermined, events occur that rely on a mixture of luck and observation, combat is basically Arkham Asylum/Assassins Creed, your character can equip items/abilities from a pool of cards you choose. It takes forever to describe but you'll understand in a couple seconds if you watch a video. There is a Campaign and an Endless mode, and a lot of free DLC (as well as one paid expansion, I believe). This one is on consoles as well. 9/10
Underrail
I barely played this but it was clear from the start that this is the Fallout 3 that fans of the original were looking for. Well, maybe not literally (I'm sure the writing and setting aren't quite as good) but this postapocalyptic isometric CRPG is pretty sweet. Very very oldschool. 8.5/10
Life is Strange
This game turned me off immediately with some cringey dialog and the worst intro song of any game I've ever played (and in fact I found the music to be pretty fucking awful throughout) but a good friend recommended I power past the first 10 minutes to the game beyond and it was worth it. The game plays out kind of like Telltale adventure (Walking Dead, Wolf Among Us, Game of Thrones) wherein you control the main character, walking them around in third person, looking at things and talking to people. The gimmick is you are a teenage girl (ehhhhhhhh) with time control powers (ehhhhhhhh) and 'your decisions matter'. Despite involving two of my least favorite story elements, and the acoustic indie soundtrack that I hate, and being largely about highschool students (least favorite demographic after college students), the game is quite good. It would have to be for me to keep playing after those first 10 minutes, jesus christ. Also, the graphics are very very good. I'm only 40% through but I'll admit, the fucking game made me cry. On consoles as well. 8.5/10
Contradiction
This is a modern FMV (full motion video) adventure game, a competent throwback to the best of the FMV adventures from the late 90s/early 00s. The acting is quite good, the story/mystery is interesting, and the interface isn't too bad. There are some interface glitches but nothing serious (at this point). Gameplay consists of walking around a town (in abstract, by clicking on a map/places on the screen), talking to people, collecting items, and trying to find contradictions in what people tell you. The gameplay is not totally different from the Phoenix Wright games (though it is a bit different), a series I enjoy, so I liked this game quite a bit. It's not long, and it's not for everyone, but it's probably the best FMV game I ever played after Under A Killing Moon. 8/10
Hatoful Boyfriend
Yeah, this is the pigeon dating game. Honestly, it's not even that, it's a Visual Novel, arguably the lowest form of vidya, and it lacks some of the bells and whistles modern VN games can have, but the writing and localization are top notch and the stories are bizarre, funny, touching, and disturbing. You're the first human (female) to attend St Pigeonation, a private school for intelligent birds (there is a whole backstory to why the birds are intelligent and can speak, I'm not gonna spoil it). There are 15 or so endings and they are almost all off the fucking wall. After you unlock all the main endings you can access the other half of the game which is a rather long mystery story. The 'game' elements are incredibly limited; for those unfamiliar, you spend almost all of your time reading and clicking through dialog (Visual Novels are pretty much like anime without the animation, or manga that consists of the same 25 art assets used over and over). And it ruins your Steam Exploration (all it would suggest to me for the last week was VNs, most of which are terrible) as well. Regardless, if you know what you're getting into and want to read a bizarre story this is a pretty great one. 8/10
Avian Attorney
After playing Hatoful Boyfriend and Contradiction I still hadn't gotten my fill of dialog based logic puzzles or anthropomorphic birds (which is odd because I hate birds in real life), so I picked this up. It's pretty much exactly what I figured: Phoenix Wright with birds. The writing is surprisingly good, the art is EXCELLENT (if you're into 19th century style pen and ink sketches of animals in period clothing), but the game proper has some bugs and issues. I finished the first case (of 5 I believe) and liked it a lot. It's a bit pricey for what it is but worth it if you can't get enough of these types of games (having played all the Phoenix Wright games, as well as the Harvey Birdman game, I guess that's me). 8/10
Lego Marvel Superheroes
The best of the Lego games, in my opinion. Runs great, looks great. The formula of past Lego games remains pretty much unchanged; third person action platforming with some puzzles and shooting elements all with a Lego (and Marvel) motif. Really sweet open-world hub area, dozens of characters to unlock, interesting abilities, decent flight model (for the flying characters). I was genuinely surprised by how good this is. Probably needs a controller to enjoy properly, and is also on console. 8.5/10
THE INTERESTING BUT FLAWED
IlluminASCII
Weird rogue-lite FPS, very very indie. The levels are randomly generated, you are a @, the enemies are big letters with names like ROBOTIC ARMADILLO or TERRIFYING PUPPY, and your goal is to collect clues on some levels, bomb parts on others. Amusing (a lot of meme and popculture references) for a bit but lacking sufficient depth to justify a purchase for most. 5/10
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter (Redux)
The (Redux) thing means I played the rerelease, which has superior graphics and supposedly less backtracking. After checking a walkthrough, I think the puzzles were altered a bit as well. Anyway, TVoEC(R) is a first person adventure game ('walking simulator') in which you have poorly explained 'powers' (like psychometry and, I dunno, the ability to see souls and some other stuff) investigating the disappearance of the titular character. The game states right off the bat that it doesn't hold your hand, which would be fine, except the game mechanics are not particularly obvious or intuitive. The mechanics were obtuse enough that I totally failed to understand how to solve the second puzzle (and probably solved the first by accident). I ended up checking a walkthrough and the mechanics are SIMPLE and could have been summarized with a single sentence, but without that sentence I had no idea what to do. However, upon solving the puzzle some of the game's actual story played out and it was so fucking weird and compelling that I'm gonna keep playing. This one is on console as well, I think. 7/10, maybe higher or lower by the time I finish.
Tharsis
A single player boardgame style game (released just a couple days ago) about the first manned mission to Mars. Disaster strikes your spaceship and you have to do what you can to survive, which means repairing damaged systems, generating food, healing injuries, etc. In game terms, it means rolling dice and choosing how to 'use' them. The game's systems are too complex to go into (they involve holding dice for later, malluses that cause dice to be lost or locked, counters to those malluses, regeneration of dice, yadayadayada) but the game is totally reliant on chance. That's not so bad, really, and is partially offset by choosing how to use your dice wisely, but the RNG will fuck you at some point, probably, and fuck you hard. The game isn't bad, but it's not great either. I'll play it until I beat it and probably never play it again. 6/10
Detective Grimoire
A point'n'click adventure game with stylish cartoon graphics, this one is not bad, even pretty good, but mostly forgettable. It's hard to recommend when there are so many great point'n'clicks out there. The mechanics are sound, and there are some original ideas here. Honestly, if the interface had made one or two tweaks I'd have put it in the GOOD list, but the dialog interface unnecessarily requires you to reopen a window every single fucking time you ask about something, which wouldn't even be that bad except that characters only interact with a couple items out of several dozen, but you HAVE to try each item with each character, so opening that window every fucking time gets old fast. Stupid mistake on the developers' part. Voice acting is surprisingly good, art is charming, lead character is kind of boring. 6.5/10
THE ONES I WOULDN'T RECOMMEND
Tembo the Elephant
Pretty much Sonic the Hedgehog but an elephant. The game manages to give a decent impression of speed, and it's pretty cool when you're crashing through stuff at breakneck speeds, but then the little dude you're racing toward shoots a giant bullet at you and you have .000001 seconds to jump over it... not fun. In fact, it kind of feels like the gameplay is inherently flawed. I have no doubt it's possible to play and even master the game, but I don't think either of those things would be fun. Too bad, the art style is nice. Screen tearing was a bit extreme, though, and the FPS was locked. Playing with a keyboard would probably give arthritis as well. On console. 5/10
99 Spirits
A computer JRPG with some unique and interesting mechanics mired by painfully repetitious combat. You fight evil spirits with a magic sword in what amounts to an incredibly simplistic QTE (attack or defend) over and over, charging up gems with every hit or block, and using those gems to either determine the nature of the spirit (words pop up over it like 'chopping', 'food,' 'wood,' 'holding objects' or big capital letters pop up like CK, TH, EA which help identify the spirit) or to identify the spirit (using the clues and the capital letters). When you identify the spirit you literally type it's name in, like HATCHET or BOWL, and then the pink cloud you were fighting becomes a demonic form of that object... and you get to fight it again. If the combat was 3x faster it would be playable, 5x faster maybe even fun, but I was bored of it within an hour as it is. Too bad, the story is interesting and the concept is original, but I ain't got 2 minutes to spend on every enemy in an RPG. If you have incredible patience or an opiate addiction maybe it's the right pace.
Culling of the Cows
Would be a decent Flash game to play for free but not worth paying for. Typical row defense game, you are a farmer defending your barn from insane?evil?zombie? cows, which come in waves. A timewaster, I guess, but there's a million of these for free. On the upside, it seemed to work fine and wasn't totally hideous, but I couldn't recommend it. 5/10
