2016 VIDEO GAME CATCH-ALL THREAD

[Death From Above]

So, the side missions in Mass Effect 1, once you get off the Citadel, are really pretty lame. The Citadel stuff all feels like the old KoToR games, are pretty good, add to the story. The random "Go to system for X reason and shoot Y" are just so lazy. Literally 95% of them recycle the same two building interiors. Not even reskinned, just the exact same buildings. Come on man. KoToR game's side missions nuked these. Hell lets be real, Jade Empire's side missions crap all over Mass Effect 1's too.

 

Great game otherwise but if that shit is still in Mass Effect 2 I'm going to die laughing. I really did enjoy Mass Effect 1 a lot on a first run through, the world they've created is great, love all the Codex Entry stuff that builds backstory, most of the dialogue is good, I liked most of the side characters for what they want to be. Hell I even love the loading screen transition where your ship shoots ouf of that Ultra Uber Rail Gun, that is outrageous. But it is a game that is rough around the edges, not quite perfect.

 

The best innovation compared to those old Bioware games? Getting a paragon point does not cost you a renegade point, getting a renegade point does not cost you a paragon point. They are actually separate things. WAS THAT SO HARD

[Cliff Hanger]

Been dicking around with Big Pharma from the Tycoon Bundle.  As with so many tycoon games, I love the concept and a lot of the ideas but I'm too scatterbrained and easily distracted to really dive deep.

[supremebve]

10 hours ago, Death From Above said:

So, the side missions in Mass Effect 1, once you get off the Citadel, are really pretty lame. The Citadel stuff all feels like the old KoToR games, are pretty good, add to the story. The random "Go to system for X reason and shoot Y" are just so lazy. Literally 95% of them recycle the same two building interiors. Not even reskinned, just the exact same buildings. Come on man. KoToR game's side missions nuked these. Hell lets be real, Jade Empire's side missions crap all over Mass Effect 1's too.

 

Great game otherwise but if that shit is still in Mass Effect 2 I'm going to die laughing. I really did enjoy Mass Effect 1 a lot on a first run through, the world they've created is great, love all the Codex Entry stuff that builds backstory, most of the dialogue is good, I liked most of the side characters for what they want to be. Hell I even love the loading screen transition where your ship shoots ouf of that Ultra Uber Rail Gun, that is outrageous. But it is a game that is rough around the edges, not quite perfect.

 

The best innovation compared to those old Bioware games? Getting a paragon point does not cost you a renegade point, getting a renegade point does not cost you a paragon point. They are actually separate things. WAS THAT SO HARD

Mass Effect 2, at least for me, improved on almost everything I wanted improved from Mass Effect 1.  It is a top 5 game of all time for me.

[Ryan]

I hear ME4 is going to be JUST Mako driving with the original controls back intact. Command Shepherd's soul embodies it. Yet, there's still sex scenes for all the Makophiles out there. Creepy.

[Andrew POE!]

Just tweeted Ubisoft for them to make the drinking games in Watch_Dogs easier. I know they patched them already, but do it agian.

[Kevin Wilson]

2 is still my favorite, 3's gameplay was fine but it just had some things that annoyed me too much. ME2 was one of the best games of the decade as far as I am concerned.

I know they had to do what they had to do for storyline reasons but my favorite characters from 2 weren't playable in 3, which was the source of my game-wide annoyance.

[Michael Sweetser]

The drinking game trophy might be, bar none, the most infuriatingly difficult trophy I've ever achieved on a game.

This will sound silly, but being either high or drunk helps.

[Michael Sweetser]

I beat Watch Dogs 2.  Hooray.

Wait, the secondary black guy on the team was the one that bit it?  You're KIDDING.

As much as the game's escalation was cool, it felt kind of underwhelming at the end.  With that said, if they make Wrench-centire DLC, I am ALL about that shit.

[/spoiler ]

Also, if someone wants to do co-op on PS4, I'm up for it.

[Neil Koch]

The UbiSoft open world games usually peter out towards the end, mostly because you become so overpowered that there's very little challenge.  I think they also purposely leave things dangling so they can pimp out DLC at some point.

[Kevin Wilson]

Playstation Now is doing their occasional $99 for one year deal so I finally bit the bullet. Playing RDR through PS Now but on a PC and using an XBox controller feels.... wrong.

[Lamp, broken circa 1988]

this seems like an important time to note that I do not beat games when I write these reviews, I play enough of them to know how I'm going to feel about them.

THE LAST GUARDIAN [4] - I don't think anyone aside from weirdo fanboys and I are gonna love this game. It's wiggly and eerie and just a wholly unenviable task that with all this time and effort is still not anywhere close to as smooth and polished as Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. I imagine a lot of people aren't going to forgive that. I am going to savor every second of it.

I finished the board game PANDEMIC LEGACY [4] - We got the good ending. I... don't want to say much more. If you have 1-3 people you can rope into taking a board game seriously and playing it 12-24 times in one year, please, try this out.

DARKEST DUNGEON [2] - This one is going to take a bit of explanation. I think this game plays really well. It is a series of intensively designed systems that culminate to some very obvious and intense tipping points. I'm a perfectionist and that's gonna be bad for my nerves. I also know that the content of the ending is going to veer towards cosmic horror, and that kind of shit tends to give me anxiety attacks. So, the reason I've given it the 2 ("I regret buying it") is I think this game's total atmosphere is going to turn on me and just ruin a week for me at some point in the future.

HITMAN [4] - I assumed the disguise of my target's yacht crew, specifically one of the bartenders. I rigged the bathroom with a remote explosive, right behind the toilet tank. He spoke with a close confidant about wanting to get back into The Life. As he made pleasantries with the rest of the people, I garnished his beverage with the rat poison I found down below the boat. He ran to vomit. I casually walked to my getaway boat. I blew him and his dinner up, and drove away. This was part of the tutorial. Hitman is the truth.

LET IT DIE [3] - You ever, like, invite someone to a party that you know is an angry drunk, but when they're sober they're charming and lovely to be around? And then like the longer the party goes, the more dread you feel because it seems like it's a countdown to a violent argument? I know Let It Die is going to turn on me. It's a free to play game from the company responsible for one of the most profitable F2P phone games, GungHo (Puzzles and Dragons). I know that it's a half-Souls half-Rougelike where keeping your equipment is one of the few things you can pay to do. I know that it costs in-game currency to return to the hubworld from the floor you're on. I know that you can pay for a subscription that lets you use a deluxe elevator that costs no in-game currency. I know that the unrestrained Suda51ness of it all is only a cloak for a barbed, fetid dagger. I know I'm gonna get hurt. I'm gonna keep playing it. We all have our failings.

Since I am done playing new games for the year, here is my provisional top 10 with two-to-three words per game. The variable is on how I feel about The Last Guardian after completing it, which will be this week sometime. If you've been thinking this has been a light year for games, maybe look up some of this stuff!

1. Hyper Light Drifter (Wordless Otherness Adventure)
2. Doom ("Hell Energy.")
3. Hitman (Best Episodic Possible)
4. Overwatch (Quake with Superheroes)
5. Pocket Card Jockey (Best Characters 2016)
6. Stardew Valley (Wife Eats Rocks)
7. Brigador (Mecha Desert Strike)
8. SUPERHOT (THE MOST INNOVATIVE SHOOTER I’VE PLAYED IN YEARS!)
9. Pokemon Moon (or, "Pokemoon.")
10. Reigns (Crusader Tinder Kings)

[SirSmUgly]

I cannot wait for my copy of TLG to get here. I like all those weird Ueda games. They make me feel feelings. 

SotC is beautiful. Can I play it effectively? Not really. The controls fight me so hard and I fight back and it doesn't work out well for me. But it was worth struggling to beat it because every time I killed one of those beautiful, majestic, just-wanted-to-be-left-the-fuck-alone creatures, I felt like hot garbage. 

ICO is good, too, but SotC is amazing, and TLG looks like it will be pretty fantastic too. 

Quick hits on games that I've been working on over the past few weeks:

Kid Icarus - I love everything about this game, actually. The platforming is a bit floaty, but it's really aesthetically pleasing, and I actually quite enjoy the combat. It becomes much easier after leveling up, and that becomes much easier because of save states. Yay, save states!

Doom - Much like the Wolfenstein reboot, it's another fast-paced, decent first-person shooter that people flipped their lids over for reasons that I don't quite understand. I'm bored with it already, and I'm not too far in. I think it's me.

VVVVVV - I've only played a little of this, but it gets a lot of mileage already out of its singular mechanic. It's impressive, actually.

Mortal Kombat X - I also got Street Fighter V recently, and after spending time with both games, I guess this is the point at which I now like Mortal Kombat more. Everything from the ease of getting through menus and getting a match going to the ability for me to play the game at a level above foundering tips the scales to MKX. It even does "hokey story involving martial arts" about three billion times better, though as I recall, SFV is something of a rush-job in that department. With MKX, I feel like the more that I learn on each run through a tower makes me a better player who would be able to hold his own against players at his level pretty well. With SFV, I'm not sure what I'm learning or how to apply it. 

But man, I'm shook that I actually like MK more than Street Fighter. I remember when MK4 and SFIII came out around the same time frame of a couple years in arcades, and SFIII was so clearly superior that it seemed that the gap could get no wider. Sure, it's been twenty years, but to have things turn around for me to this extent is pretty amazing.

Until Dawn - My dirty little secret is that I like QTEs, especially in the right setting. A slasher flick where you have to react suddenly and efficiently to a jump scare that might have made you drop your controller is definitely "the right setting." Bonus: The ability to make at least somewhat meaningful and interesting choices, AKA that thing that Telltale has forgotten to do ever since they finished their masterpiece known as The Wolf Among Us. 

 

[EVA]

I feel like Sony really dropped the ball on promoting UNTIL DAWN.  I thought it was way better than most Telltale games and stealthily one of the best PS4 exclusives.

[Death From Above]

VVVVVV isn't very long but it's really, really good at doing exactly what it set out to do.

[Zimbra]

Target had the console versions of Elder Scrolls Online for like $12 so I picked it up.  Seems pretty decent so far.  The combat is about the midpoint between Skyrim and your standard MMO fare, but feels more than the sum of its parts.  The quest design isn't groundbreaking or anything, but there aren't as many "get me 10 moose antlers" type quests as I expected, so that's a win.  All in all it's a pretty good time-waster for the price.

[SirSmUgly]

Agreed on Until Dawn being one of the better implementations of CYOA-style narrative in games, and agreed on VVVVVV doing its thing really, really well. 

I'm also just into The Last Guardian. It is fantastic, and it's helped by two things over SotC in my view:

1. Instead of killing the majestic creature(s) at the center of the game, I help him. 

2. Unlike in SotC, I can climb somewhat effectively. I don't know if that's me or if that's improved controls, but after about five minutes of falling all over myself, I caught right on to climbing, which is clunky, but not too hard to do ultimately. 

[Andrew POE!]

Still having 'fun' with Watch Dogs. Can't find the last criminal convoy. Got all the fixer missions and gang hideouts done. The stealth in this game is so great because the enemies are so stupid.
The main story is great once you realize that Aiden Pierce is an introvert. Just discovered the Batcave this morning. 

[Neil Koch]

I think you have to get past a certain point in the story to unlock the last Convoy.

[BurningBeard]

Started playing the Resident Evil Remake on PS4. 40 minutes in and I died when a zombie turned into a crimson beast. In the mean time I COMPLETELY FORGOT IT DOESNT AUTOMATICALLY SAVE YOUR PROGRESS. Nearly launched my controller through the TV

[Neil Koch]

I did a couple of no save runs back in the day.  No way I'd be able to do that now. 

[BurningBeard]

I only ever did that once, for Resi 2, which I could still probably play with my eyes closed. Took about two hours and I was sweating bullets at the final boss. A+ rating too 

[GojiColin]

So in a rarity this year I actually managed to beat a game!  I put about 60 hours into Tokyo Mirage Sessions and put the final boss to rest last night.

 

Despite it being an odd cross over of two franchises I've enjoyed for years, its a really fun game.  The combat is the best possible version of the Persona 3/4 system, with being able to sub party members mid battle and the combo "sessions" when you hit weaknesses.

The plot isn't earth shaking, but the side stories with your party members helps flesh them out from their very generic beginnings.  This is one of the few games where I found myself liking all the party members and using them all in combat; instead of having a set team.

I know it sold poorly in Japan, but Western sales doubled that so here's hoping for a sequel on the Switch.

 

 

[Andrew POE!]

Got done with the mission that had "Jesus Built My Hotrod" in Watch Dogs and that's legitimately a cool moment in the game. Almost-GTA like there.

And Ubisoft should stop trying to make T-Bone a thing. And Aiden Pearce for that matter (pretty boring depressed guy as your protag?)

What's sad with Watch Dogs is that all the side missions are done before the end of the third act.

I think by the time I'm done with it, I'll just have Social Lubricant to do.

[SirFozzie]

I used this for a blog article, but what were your "Turkeys" for 2016, video game wise? here's my article (I won't make you go there, I'm not that desperate for clicks :))

10. Mafia III: The storyline was great. The weak side missions, and the busywork however, drag what coulda/shoulda  been a contender down into muddled average land, which is not where a major AAA release needs to be. I hope more games take from the storyline and handling charged issues the way they did. Just not the gameplay.

 

9. Nintendo and the WiiU: Thirteen WiiU releases in 2016 got seven or more Metacritic-credited reviews.  That's all. Not that they were necessarily BAD games this year, but this was the last gasp of an already dead system.. "Star Fox Zero/Guard" will save us!" They cried. Um.. no. Star Fox wasn't necessarily a turkey, but by Star Fox and thus Nintendo standards it was... and with it, went the last hopes of the Ninten-gamer. So, early 2017 will bring us the Switch, which hopefully be a switch in fortunes for Nintendo. Nintendo keeps zigging when everyone else is zagging, and when it works, it works brilliantly. when it doesn't.. it zigs right into a tree.

 

8. Assassin's Creed Chronicles: Let's take what made Assassin's Creed great (3D, open universe gaming), and turn it into a 2.5D platformer. Fans were.. not impressed. I think the term Shovelware would be a bit overstating it, but it's quite obvious that no one really considered these games more than anything then a way to keep the Assassin's Creed cash machine flowing. It's rumored there won't be a Assassin's Creed Game in 2017.. which I think is a good idea, as it will give fans time to recharge their desire to play what makes this series great.

 

7. Homefront: The Revolution: Quick, let's take a forgettable, ridiculous premised game (North Korea has taken over the US. O NOES!) and make a sequel that would be acceptable, except it has more bugs then an overful dumpster! Oy vey. The only reason that this isn't much, much higher on our Turkey award list is because well, no one expected much from it anyway.

 

6. TMNT: Mutants in Manhattan: They had a decent enough background, and had a good fighting system, for about 15 minutes. That's excuseable for a $15 game. NOT a $50 one. It's fairly obvious that this was meant to piggyback off the TMNT sequel.  The game bogged down with cluttered, repetitive levels and half-cooked mechanics. No Turtle Power here.  I think I'd rather play Turtles in Time (what is it anyway with X in X titles for TMNT games, anyway?)

 

5. 7 Days to Die. Telltale Games makes a great bunch of storytelling games. This was not one of them. The game wasn't anywhere ready to release, and even months of patching and squashing bugs couldn't save this one. 7 Days to Die wasn't the players in this one.. it was the game play that doomed this release to die a forgotten death, and unlike the game's zombies, it won't be coming back from the dead.

 

4. Umbrella Corps: I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall at the meetings for this, mostly so I could fly down the throat of the person who pitched this idea and save the tarnishing of a franchise. "Hey, let's take our survival horror game Resident Evil that everyone knows works and turn it into a free to play shooter that we can nickel and dime our players to death with". To make things worse, the gameplay is about as half-baked as the concept was. This is not an Umbrella you're going to want to hide under. I would apologize to Rhianna for that joke, but I think that the folks behind Umbrella Corps need to apologize to Rhianna for tarnishing the word Umbrella.

 

3. Mighty No 9 :Absence did NOT make the heart grow fonder, it poisoned the heart, and eventually led to the doom of what would have been a decent enough, if forgettable game, if it hadn't been delayed several years, and had the hopes and dreams of every single Mega Man fanboy. When it didn't hit those lofty heights, yup. Doooooomed. (looks at next game on list) Oh, did someone say Lofty heights?

 

2. No Man's Sky I said it before, this game didn't just shoot for the moon and the stars, it shot for the whole freaking universe. It was beautiful, It was daring.. but it wasn't really FUN. And once again, disappointed fan-boys plus grandiose promises unmet equals lots and lots of anger. Lots, and Lots and Lots.. actually, I'll just say Lots of Lots of anger.  The sad thing is, I could see someone tying in No Man's Sky to something like EVE with space battles and more active gameplay, and it being a humongous hit.

 

And our Golden Turkey of the year goes to.. drumroll please...

 

1. Ghostbusters: Yeah, the movie pissed off folks who didn't want folks to remake one of the classic movies of our age, and worse yet, had the audacity to put WOMEN in their roles. But that didn't ruin a movie. Which is good, because the game just plain pissed off everyone, from the folks I just mentioned, to the folks who wanted a fun game, to the people who wanted a productive use of their time, probably even to the production people who will have this turkey on their resume going forward.

 

(Dishonorable mention: Quantum Break, The Technomancer, Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness, Battleborn,  Virtual Reality generation 1, the 2016 Presidential Election)

 

 

Early Candidate for the Golden Turkey award of 2017? Star Citizen. It's made the combined promises of our 2016's #2 and #3 Turkeys, and the fans have already started to turn against it. It's a decent enough arena space shooter. That's no where near enough. 2017 will make or break Star Citizen? My bet? Broken into atomic pieces.

 

(now that I think about it, I should have made ghostbusters #3, moved up Mighty #9 and No Man's Sky)

[Death From Above]

I feel like 7 Days to Die has been in "early access" longer than at least one current gen console has existed, even if that might not quite be true. But it is a game that a couple years ago held significantly more promise than it does now, and unfortunately has wound up as yet another blow against Steam's early access system. Which at this point is really struggling to name successful examples.