My Week In Gaming - 2-3-13

SHLEEPY DAWGS (Sleeping Dogs)

Do you like Chinese action movies (Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee, etc.)? Do you like Grand Theft Auto-styled open world games? Do you like the Batman: Arkham series' combat? Do you like excellently crafted stories? Do you like things which are awesome? If the answer to one or more of these things is "yes," then you absolutely need to play Sleeping Dogs.

This game is stellar. I like almost everything about it,(though it isn't quite as flowing as B:AA or B:AC), to the GORGEOUS graphics, to the setting of Hong Kong, a place you don't see often in video games. It's everything an open world game should be, the cars handle well, the world feels alive, and fully realized, there's a lot of stuff to do, and it's surprisingly well written. The story is actually exceptionally well done so far, and I'm becoming invested in the characters.

It's hard to believe this almost didn't come out at all, especially since it feels so polished. The game controls nearly-perfectly, and it's just... Excellent. It's just a great open world game. It's got a unique, visually stunning location, it's got a ton of great ideas, and it executes them all wonderfully. It's probably one of the best games of that genre I've ever played, but even if you aren't a fan of the GTA clone, I could still recommend it for the combat, or the story alone. It's a wonderful game, top marks across the board, consider this an honorary position on my top ten games of 2012 list.

There are so many little details, and polish. Like the fact that after beating up enemies in some parts of the city, if you stick around long enough, paramedics will come to try and save them. Or the way Wei's head will bob along to music in a club.

Seriously, if you're a fan of the genre, I cannot recommend this enough. Even if you aren't, there's enough great content in here to merit a second look. Top notch, across the board.

Iron Brigade

THUMBS UP BUTTON

GOTY EVERY YEAR

The Secret World

Yep, this game is still pretty awesome, and is still crazy. I'm most of the way through the second zone, or area or whatever (still in Solomon Island) and... Yeah. It's pretty great. The boss of the first dungeon is Cthulu. Where do you go from there?

My Week In Gaming - 1-27-13

Closure



This is definitely one of the more creative puzzle platformers I've seen in a while, and I really dig it. It came up with a really interesting concept, and sticks to it, doing all sort of interesting things. I'm roughly a quarter of the way through it, and I've only played like an hour, maybe an hour and a half, so it seems short, but the puzzles are fairly challenging so far, so I kinda dig it.

Recettear: An Item Shop Tale



I really think this is a fun spin on the typical RPG ideas. For those who don't know, the spin is that instead of it being the typical RPG story, you're the person running the item shop, which makes it a sort of blending between a JRPG and a Tycoon game.

It's a bit unpolished, but I really like what I've played so far.

Super Hexagon



OH MY GOD THIS GAME IS AMAZING BUY IT IMMEDIATELY

I've beaten the first two settings, Hexagon (Hard) and Hexagoner (Harder), and it's probably my favorite Android release to date. PLAY IT. NOW. THROW YOUR MONEY AT THE PERSON WHO MADE IT, HE ALSO MADE VVVVVV!

The Secret World



Finally an MMO which isn't just completely World of Warcraft, and is instead just mostly World of Warcraft. I kid, I kid. The comparisons are actually more apt to games like Champions Online than they are to WoW, and even then there's a lot of stuff that truly makes the game unique.

I picked it up for $10 on sale, since I've been wanting to try it ever since the abolished the monthly subscription, and I've played a little bit of it. I really like it! It's not perfect, but it's enough of a breath of fresh air that I'm willing to overlook it's shortcomings.

The first thing I really like about The Secret World which sets it apart from other MMO's I've tried (and I've tried a lot) is their "horizontal, not vertical" approach to character building. There are (technically) no character levels. Instead, after you gain so much XP you are awarded with either a skill or ability point which you can use to purchase abilities, or increase your skills. Due to the way this works, it doesn't take very long to max a skill out, but eventually you'll be able to max out everything (as best I can tell). That's a really interesting approach to take, and one which seems pretty well done.

The flip side to this though is probably the game's biggest weakness I've encountered so far. Because of the lack of a simple "level" system, it becomes a lot more difficult to figure out exactly where you should be, and how hard things around you are at a glance. In a game like WoW, for example, I can easily tell how much stronger than me a monster is simply looking at a number. That monster is level 26, I'm level 30, so I know I can kill it easily. That monster is level 50 and I'm level 13, so I should RUN AWAY. The Secret World indicates this with more... Abstract icons. Oh, so that monster is three blue dots. Well that doesn't help. That monster is one white skull. Does that mean I shouldn't fight it? There is an order to it, but it's kind of hard to figure out. I even looked at an FAQ about it, and I'm still confused. What missions are actually your level and when you're ready to do things like take on a new dungeon or go to a new area are equally difficult to decipher, especially since the recommended scale (missions will be labeled very easy, easy, normal, hard, very hard, or devastating  is based on both the skills you currently have equipped, and the gear you currently have equipped, which means that the scale just seems sort of wonky and unreliable. At some point I wonder if it wouldn't have been better suited to simply assign arbitrary level numbers based on how many skills you've acquired, similar to Skyrim.

A non-combat related thing which sets the game apart is that some of the missions are actually adventure-game style puzzles, and really difficult ones at that. Just the fact that they put something like that into the game to break up the monotony of combat (not that the combat is monotonous) makes the game a million times more interesting, in my opinion. That said, I'm kind of torn about their lack of inclusion of some sort of notebook into the user interface (especially when they already have an internet browser in it). On the one hand, it would be a great utility, and one which seems like a no-brainer to include. On the other hand, the game actually demands that you take notes yourself, and have a notebook on hand at all times, which is something I haven't seen a game do since Myst, and as far as I'm concerned, it's a pretty cool way to engage the player, and get them more into the conspiracy theory setting.

I really enjoy the tone of the game. The first area (which I'm, admittedly, not very far into) actually has a quite eerie atmosphere, and it's fun to see an MMO which isn't either medieval fantasy, or sci-fi. The writing seems pretty competent so far, though the main character being mute while others are talking to him makes me appreciate The Old Republic that much more. Their kitchen sink attitude of "EVERYTHING is true" makes for an interesting world, because it really does seem to mean that no kinds of monsters, from the typical zombies, to ancient golems, to Lovecraftian nightmares, are off limits.

With that said, I do find it kind of disappointing that the very first things you're fighting in the game with all these exotic monster in it is... Well, zombies. They're kind of interesting zombies, and eventually they're SEA MONSTER ZOMBIES, but when I first got to the zone, excited to see the cool creatures they had for me to fight, my initial response was... Oh. Great. And I say that as someone who likes zombies!

The game limits you to being able to use a certain number of skills at once (though you can swap them out on the fly when you're out of combat), so you need to think carefully about which ones you're actually slotting in at a given time. The game has recommended "decks" (builds) which give you some idea of how to build, but you don't need to follow them. Right now my guy is a blood mage with a shotgun and nothing to lose.

Oh and also, you get your powers because a magic bee flies into your mouth while you're sleeping. I'm not making that up, that's true and accurate.

My Week In Gaming - 1-20-13

The Witcher 2 (PC)

So I finished The Witcher 2. It's a really good game! I'd recommend it in a minute to any RPG fans.

There are a few caveats, of course. The stealth sections, for one thing, are really, really terrible. Geralt can't seem to decide whether he wants to jump into cover, or dance around cover for a few seconds, which can lead to you getting screwed over pretty badly in certain sections. The save system is also very strange. You don't get access to any files of any kind, you just get the option to save, and it makes a new file. I'm a little unclear on just how it works, sometimes it would save over old files, other times it wouldn't.

Also, the game gives you some items early on, gives you no indication that they'll be important (beyond one of them being a really nice upgrade for the point you get it), and then if you hold onto them until near the end, you get the best items in the game. So that kinda sucks.

But overall it's got an interesting, fun combat system, a really good storyline with lots of political intrigue (although it can sometimes be hard to keep all the kingdoms and empires straight, I imagine having read the original Polish novels would probably help with that). One thing I like about it is that, for the most part, the monsters you encounter aren't the typical orcs and goblins you'd expect from a fantasy RPG, they're weird things I've never heard of, like Nekkers, or a Kayran. I don't know if those are inventions of the series, or monsters I'd just never heard of (possibly from Polish fiction?), but it's an appreciated change.

So yeah. Bring on The Witcher 3, I'm ready to see what's next, especially with such a cliffhanger ending.

Snapshot

This game is pretty cool. It's a 2D indie platformer (I'm surprised no one ever thought of that before), with the "hook" being that you can take pictures of items within the environment, and move them to different places to solve puzzles. It seems pretty awesome so far, I'm about halfway through the first world.

Life Is Magic (Android)

So this is a pretty neat phone game. It's a lite-RPG, but it uses the GPS on your phone to map the area you can explore, and fight monsters in, as the real-world area where you are. You also buy items and gain "influence" with nearby real-world shops (for example, I have a nearby weapon store which is a Wal-Mart). If you get enough influence with a store to be the top person, you get a discount on it.

What makes it work though, is that it's actually a really fun game. It has a turn-based combat system, and you can earn mana by casting spells, in order to use more powerful spells (or power up ones you can cast). This is a slightly different take on turn-based combat, closer resembling something like Magic the Gathering than Final Fantasy, which is a very nice choice.

That said, there are negatives to it. It features a Farmville-style "play for so long, then pay a dollar to play more now, or wait an hour for energy to recharge" system (though it's not nearly as bad as Farmville or Mafia Wars), and I do wish it explained a bit more of how it works, as a lot of what I've figured out about what makes the game fun is, well, stuff I had to figure out. I also wish it leaned more heavily into the actual RPG mechanics, as thus far "levels" only seem to be arbitrary barriers on what spells you can cast, and what items you can equip. I would really have liked a talent system, or some sort of point-allocation system, to give you more interesting choices.

With those minor complaints out of the way, this seems like an incredibly solid phone game so far. I quite like it.

Dead Rising 2 (PC)

Man, there is some truly outstanding stuff in this game, it's just a shame there's so much awful mixed in. A mediocre, by the numbers zombie story, some of the worst boss battles this side of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and an absolutely grueling endgame all make it hard to enjoy the genuinely fun bit where you're running around, duck-taping things together and cutting through large swathes of zombies to get through them, and saving all the crazy survivors around the Fortune City strip.

Look, I'm not looking for every game to make the same choices. There are plenty of games out there, and there's plenty of room for games to take chances. I actually love the 3-day-cycle idea (and for that matter, Majora's Mask), and how it's implemented here, but a lot of the things they do in this game just don't work. The psychopath battles are terrible, and not because they're hard, because they're unfair. Most of the psychopaths have abilities which straight-up stunlock you. I appreciate that they're there to be fought at higher levels, on your third or fourth cycle, but even then they just don't work very well. They aren't fun, they're unfair.

That said, the stuff that I like about that game, I really really like about that game. The combo weapon designs are all delightfully crazy (IT'S A WHEELCHAIR, BUT THE CHAIR PART IS A LAWNMOWER!) and there's just something delightful about all the various things you can kill zombies with in the game. The good stuff is good enough for me to overlook the bad stuff, but if the bad stuff weren't there, or were actually well done, then this game would be outstanding.

Super Hexagon (Android)

And as a counter to those who may think that I dislike the psychopath fights in Dead Rising 2 simply because they are hard, I give you Super Hexagon, a game which is extremely hard, and at the same time, fair. This game is outstanding. It's incredibly simple, but exceptionally well executed, and unlike Dead Rising's fake difficulty, when you lose, it's because you screwed up. It's a skill based game, and an extremely well done one at that.

Also, the music is pretty great.

My Week In Gaming - 1-13-13

I thought I'd write a bit about what I've been playing this week. So here we are.

Star Wars: The Old Republic

You know, while at first glance, the free-to-play option for SWTOR looked like a pile of garbage, I've actually taken a closer look, and found that it is, in fact, a pile of garbage. But a slightly less trashy pile-of-garbage.

Most of the features of the game which you have to subscribe to get, or buy separately  are actually achieveable through gameplay in an interesting way. When you buy the unlock off of the in-game real money store, you actually get an item which you can use to unlock stuff. The trick is, these items are not bound to you, so you can sell them to other players for in game money. That means that, if you're willing to grind out some credits on a level 50, you can actually unlock most of the stuff you'll want through normal gameplay. Of course, the one thing you can't unlock without subscribing is an unlimited credit (or other currency) cap, which means you can't buy anything worth more than 350,000 credits. It's not perfect, but it works.

I did actually get my second level 50 in the game over the course of a few weeks. It was an Imperial Agent, and let me just say... Wow. The gap in quality between the storylines is never more evident than when you play the IA storyline. That content is absolutely the best stuff I've seen in that game, and I've played a whole lot of it. The Consular story (my other 50 is a consular) is... Well, it's not very good. It's ok, but none of the companions are particularly interesting, and the story itself doesn't feel very consequential, or interesting. The IA storyline, by contrast, is awesome, and all the companions are super interesting.

It's a really rough problem. The IA storyline is absolutely great, it's just kind of a shame that the best parts of it are hidden behind hundreds of hours of middling-to-good world content. Perhaps I'm just tired of that style of MMO, I don't know.

The Witcher 2: Enhanced Edition

I played 11 hours of the first Witcher, which sounds like a lot, but is actually hardly anything, considering the game could reach something like 50-60 hours if you were trying to complete all the side quests.

So now I'm a good way into The Witcher 2, and aside from a weird crash-to-desktop issue I'm having (I think it has something to do with the memory in my computer, I'm not sure), it seems to be a better game across the board. The overall storyline is actually something I care about, the voice acting on Geralt isn't intolerable this time, the graphics are outstanding, the game feels more cinematic, it plays better... It's not all that dissimilar from the jump from Mass Effect to Mass Effect 2.

I'm very fond of the first Mass Effect for a lot of reasons, but none of them are the part where I have to actually play it. The shooting had some good ideas (which I wish they hadn't dropped for the sequels) but poor implementation, the interface was godawful, and the conversations all had a very going through the motions feel to them, and even though the story was outstanding (I still think the reveal about Sovereign is the best twist in the entire series), it felt very rough. Then Mass Effect 2 came along, made the shooting better, gave us a usable interface, and actually had the conversations and cutscenes animate something other than a person shaking their hands forward, or rubbing the back of their neck, and it was amazing.

So yeah. The Witcher 2 ain't half bad.

Professor Layton and the Unwound Future

Oh Professor Layton, you're just so charming. There's just so many things to love about you. From your gorgeous art style, to the way you always talk about being "a true gentleman," to, of course, the way everyone in your universe is completely crazy about puzzles.

This game features a mob who rules London with an iron fist, by making anyone who crosses them solve puzzles! That's not something I made up! That happens! There is a line of dialog which literally says "I'm going to have to teach you a lesson the old fashioned way, by forcing you to solve this puzzle!"

Least intimidating street gang since the Jets and the Sharks.

Super Mario 3D Land

Yep, that sure is a Mario game all right. Turns out they can still make a pretty good one of those.

So that's what I've been playing this week, and a few brief thoughts on everything. I hope you enjoyed hearing my insane ramblings, and maybe I'll do this again sometime.

The Third Annual Wherein I Rant Awards - 2012

Wow, time for one of these end of year wrap up posts already, huh? Well, it's sure been an interesting year. I stopped updating, I lied and said I was going to start updating again, some other... Stuff... Happened... In any case, it's not important. What is important, though, is my opinion on 2012's movies and video games! It's been an... Interesting year for those too. I've been calling 2012 the year of surprises. The Avengers surprised everyone by being one of the biggest movies ever, Joss Whedon surprises the studio by proving that he can make money for them, some of the biggest games of the year come right out of nowhere, not even having been announced when the year began... But all of that is relative. It doesn't matter how big the surprise is, how good is the surprise? And that's what I'm here to talk about, the best video games and movies of the year. You guys ready? All right, here we go.

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Film

Best Film

5 - The Dark Knight Rises

While the film isn't as good as The Dark Knight, and is indeed probably the weakest of the Nolan trilogy, I still loved it. The pitch-perfect casting which all three films benefited from, as well as a story which is really gripping if you don't think about it too hard, helped me really enjoy the movie as I was watching it, even if I did immediately pick out half a dozen plot holes as soon as I left the theater. Borrowing from several very recognizable Batman storylines helped my inner comic book nerd be satisfied, and the film features, in my opinion, the best version of Catwoman ever put on screen, large or small.

Batman Begins and The Dark Knight are both better films, but The Dark Knight Rises was good enough to close out the trilogy, and even the worst Nolan Batman film is better than most other stuff out there. I had a really good time with it.

4 - Wreck-It Ralph

Wreck-It Ralph sold itself with tons and tons of video game cameos in the commercial, and while it has quite a few of those (which I appreciated, being the lifelong gamer that I am), the reason the movie works is because it's a love letter to gaming far beyond that. The way it pays tribute to the little things about gaming was something I really appreciated, and the fact that it was a fine film, with a lot of heart, on top of that, was just icing on the cake.

3 - The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey


The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey was a film which I was very excited about, but also very nervous about. The fact that they were splitting The Hobbit, not a long book on it's own, into three very long films was enough to make me wary, but so far the seem to be pulling it off.

The added material works most of the time, although you have to accept that the film is a series of short vignettes set in Middle Earth which just happen to tell the story of The Hobbit as a framing device.

Also, side note, the 48fps version of the film looked incredible, and I don't care what anyone says. It's good to see progress actually, you know, progressing. 

2 - The Cabin In the Woods

I've mentioned this before, but really, I can't say much more. Cabin In The Woods is an incredible movie, but if I tell you why, it ruins a lot of the fun. Just, give it a try some time.

1 - The Avengers

Again, The Avengers is a film I've mentioned before. It's simply fantastic. The film felt like both a Joss Whedon product, and the perfect Avengers film, and really, what more could you ask for? Everyone saw this already, but man, it's so good. Just... So, so good.

Gaming 

Game Of The Year:

10 - Spec Ops: The Line

Spec Ops: The Line is a game I don't think anyone saw coming. Not that people didn't realize it was coming out, but because all the leadup made it appear to be just another generic modern military third-person shooter. When the game actually released, and turned out to actually be a brutal deconstruction of the modern military shooter though, and on top of that, one with an absolutely insane storyline, it took a lot of people by surprise.

I actually only recently got around to playing this one, and I'm glad I did. It does a lot of really interesting things with it's story, and while the risks it takes don't always play out, and it stumbles in a few too many important spots for me to really love it, I respect that it actually tried to deal with such mature themes, when most modern military shooters go out of their way to avoid them.

My biggest problems come in to the fact that the game is really just not any fun to play. The difficulty is screwed up (I recommend just playing through on easy to see the story, I struggled through most the game on normal, dealing with bullet sponge heavy enemies, until I just gave up because I was so bored of the combat). I've heard some claim that the game being un-fun was part of the "point," and I'm not sure I'm convinced of that.
The game is also gorgeous, especially when set to the "vibrant" color scheme. It's set in Dubai, which has been hit by multiple sandstorms, so at times it falls into the "brown is realistic" problem many shooters do, but when it hits you with a great vista, it was the prettiest game I played all year. In addition to this, the way the main character and his squad members are transformed throughout the game, going from being a very restrained, protocol-following soldiers, into obscenity hurling, vicious men, filled with white hot rage, was incredible.

I'd definitely recommend giving this one a look.

9 - The Darkness II

I never played the original The Darkness, and I never really felt compelled to. It being a console exclusive when I'm primarily a PC Gamer (though I do own several consoles) kind of steered me off, and while I heard decent things about it, there's really only a few things people tend to remember about it, and nearly all of them involve Jenny. The part where you can watch all of To Kill A Mockingbird on TV with her, and the part where she dies are the two I hear cited most often, specifically.

So I was actually quite surprised when I bought The Darkness II on PC for a pittance, and had a lot of fun with it... For all of five or so hours. While the game is unfortunately short, what's there is undeniably entertaining. The darkness powers are all really fun, the executions are satisfyingly brutal, and the characters are... Well, the characters who actually get fleshed out are pretty solid.

Even though the story was overly predictable (and done much better in the Buffy episode "Normal Again," for the record), and I literally predicted the post-credits twist halfway through the game, the story beats themselves are done competently enough not to get in the way of the game itself.

If you give The Darkness II a chance, and a few hours, however, you'll find a very entertaining experience, and there's something to be said for a game which can be gone through in a few hours, and be reflected back on as being pretty darn fun.

8 - Super Monday Night Combat

I really, really liked the first Monday Night Combat, and it's player-versus-player, third-person-shooter take on the tower defense genre. Now, Super Monday Night Combat not only attacked a new genre, the MOBA (or Dota-like, if you'd rather), but a new business model, by launching as a free-to-play game, with all of the character classes unlockable lots of play, or by paying some money (essentially, the League of Legends model).

Super Monday Night Combat is an incredibly fun take on the genre, is extremely fun to play, and is actually really funny (the first time you hear the lines, which are inevitably repeated far too many times). The classes have tons of variety, but none of them felt incredibly overpowered, and each required skill (albeit some more than others) to play effectively. It's some of the most fun I had with multiplayer this year, and if you haven't tried it yet, it's free, so go try it out, it's a lot of fun.

7 - FTL - Faster Than Light

Perhaps no game signifies 2012 better than FTL - Faster Than Light. Not only was the game made via a successful Kickstarter, a trend which only began this year, but it is an incredibly ambitious game, like many of the games you'll see further up this list. It is, in it's own way, entirely about player choice, as are the top three game on my list, which was a huge theme for games this year, although it's 

The game is essentially the Star Trek game I've always wanted. It lets you take the roll of the captain (well, controller of the captain, along with other crew members) of a space ship on the run from the rebel forces, with the only plans which will let you defeat the rebels, blah, blah, blah, generic science fiction story.

The reason to play this game, is because it lets you command nearly everything about the small ship you're on, during space battles, and just general space combat. Every time you jump to a new beacon, you'll get some sort of random event. Sometimes they're hostile (Slavers are attacking you!), sometimes they're neutral (A merchant wants to sell you some stuff), or sometimes nothing of consequence happens at all. As you travel the galaxy, you can build up your ship in all sorts of ways, focusing on weapons, or shields, and upgrading them with scrap, or using the scrap as currency to buy new items or crew members. During attacks, you can have your crew attempt to fight off boarding parties, or open up the airlocks for the rooms the boarding party is in, and vent the atmosphere, suffocating them. You can destroy ships, or send your own crew in to disable them, and defeat their crew, giving you more stuff.

The sheer amount of tactics which appear in the game is astounding, and the game is incredibly fun to play. Unfortunately, a few mechanics that I just didn't click with prevented me from putting it any higher up on this list. The rebel fleet is constantly getting nearer to you, and as a result, you have to keep constantly progressing toward an end goal. The result is that, by the time you finally start to feel built up, you inevitably reach the extremely difficult final boss, which I have yet to defeat.

I hope to see improvement upon this in a sequel, letting me take my time, in more of an open world. As it is, FTL is a fantastic game, with a few incredibly disappointing caveats. Definitely give it a look, especially if you're a science fiction fan.

6 - Rayman: Jungle Run

The only iOS/Android title to feature on my list, Rayman: Jungle Run is a runner released by Ubisoft, using the same engine and art assets as last year's extremely good Rayman: Origins. Now let me be clear, this is not an endless runner, it's a runner. This means that, while you don't have full control of your character (only having the ability to jump, hover, and punch, while constantly running forward), there are still goals beyond "run as fast as you can," as there are 40 levels (50 with the recently released free update), each with a set number of Lums (collectibles), and with an end goal. 4 of the levels are "Land of the Livid Dead" levels, which are extremely challenging, and only available after meeting a set number of Lums collected.

While I am typically extremely off put by runners (I can't stand the "endless runner" genre, and I find them an utter chore to play), I had an extremely good time with Rayman: Jungle Run, partly due to the inventive, and entertaining level design (though it should be noted, I recommend playing by trying to collect all the Lums, as the game is extremely easy otherwise), and partly due to the incredible presentation. The art assets are just as GORGEOUS as they were in last year's release, the music (which is primarily taken from the Rayman: Origins soundtrack) is fantastic, and the world of Rayman is as zany as always.

As someone who doesn't like this genre of game, this one is so well made, I didn't care, and couldn't help but have a blast with it. Me putting this on my list, and especially so high up, and above such good games, should speak for itself. I'm not the kind of guy who plays a ton of games on my phone, but this is one you definitely shouldn't overlook. Plus, I could listen to that perfect score music all day. HOLY CRAP IT'S SO GOOD! I realize it's from Rayman: Origins, but I kind of want to call that, like, 15 second loop, song of the year anyway. So, so good.

5 - Torchlight 2

I liked the original Torchlight, but I had a few, very specific, very large problems with it. The repetitive, eventually boring environments, the absurdly overpowered Alchemist class, the terrible, terrible final boss fight, and the lack of co-op all eventually put me off of the otherwise entertaining experience. Torchlight 2 solved all of these problems, albeit coming with it's own set of them.

The environments are more varied this time, the classes and their powers more well-balanced, and the game is a blast to play co-op with a friend. The world feels bigger, and although you're going down a set path, it doesn't quite feel that way, since you're in an overworld, not just descending deeper and deeper into a cave. 

Despite it's almost non-existent story, Torchlight 2 triumphs by making the player feel powerful, and with all the different classes, and randomized areas, there's tons of replay value. Back when I was playing it near launch, Veteran, which I was playing on, seemed to be pretty messed up, however, with the difficulty curve being way out of whack. That may have been fixed, I haven't checked, but points were taken off for that. Still, that was a minor complaint, and Torchlight 2 is a great game. Definitely give it a look if it's your kind of thing.

4 - They Bleed Pixels

By 2012, you wouldn't be remiss for ignoring every indie, 2D, retro graphics platformer to come out, since there are about 8 released every day. Still, when I gave They Bleed Pixels a try despite that, I was really pleasantly surprised.

Not only is They Bleed Pixels extremely challenging, but unlike games like Super Meat Boy (which I also really like), the keyboard controls actually work well enough for me to make it through the game, despite their warnings that you should use a gamepad. They Bleed Pixels is an extremely challenging, extremely fun 2D platformer bathed in the Cthulu mythos. It also has a very well made combat system, which lets you kill enemies with various moves, and build up your score by executing combos. After getting so many points, you can actually earn checkpoints, which you can drop anywhere in the world where you're able to stand still for a moment, or, if you think you're good enough, you can refrain from dropping your checkpoint for a large point (or "pint", if you'd rather), bonus. It's a clever idea, and one unlike anything I can think of in other games. The checkpoint system lets you drop checkpoints before, or after sections you've found difficult, and it's really well executed. 

On top of that, the incredibly difficult, very well designed levels are a blast to play, if you're good enough. They're far, far longer than something like Super Meat Boy's, which helps set it apart from games like that, even if it obviously took a lot of inspiration from them. This one comes highly recommended.

3 - XCOM: Enemy Unknown

XCOM: Enemy Unknown sure was a surprise this year, wasn't it? Not only was the game not even announced when the year began, but XCOM, the first person shooter which had next-to-nothing to do with the actual old turn-based strategy series was much maligned. Now, all of the sudden, the shooter has disappeared (presumably undergoing some heavy retooling), and the strategy game, made by the kings of turn-based strategy, Firaxis, has come out, and oh boy, it is glorious. 

XCOM: Enemy Unknown is a tense, difficult, highly entertaining game. While I've never played the old ones, so I can't speak to how it treats the franchise, on it's own, the game is wonderful. Losing soldiers, especially those you had begun to build up, and named or customized. 

The enemies were all extremely well designed, the upgrades were all crucial, and yet you simply couldn't get all of them, at least early on. You were sure to lose people, and since death was permanent, it really meant something (R.I.P. Captain Machismo, my first heavy, your facial hair will live on in folktale and legend). The actual story of the game itself was simplistic, but that left plenty of room for letting you create stories about what was going on yourself. The game is fantastic at letting you do that. 

The game does eventually suffer from maps being repeated a bit too often, and there are (or at least, were when I was playing) quite a few bugs which hurt the game, but the game overcomes those things, to be one of the most incredible gaming experiences all year.

2 - Mass Effect 3

It's a real shame that any time I have to talk about Mass Effect 3, an absolutely phenomenal game, I have to use the disclaimer "other than the last ten minutes." Let's think about that, shall we? The Mass Effect trilogy was a hundred hours of near perfection, and the last ten minutes left such a bad taste in my mouth that I try to pretend they never happened, because they retroactively make everything that came before them worse.

There's very little to be said about the ending of Mass Effect 3 that hasn't been said already, so let me be brief. I didn't like it. It didn't work on a lot of fundamental storytelling levels, it felt rushed, the extended cut was essentially butting a bandage on a mortal wound, and "Leviathan" probably would have fixed most of my issues with it, were it not for the fact that it, you know, WAS PAID DOWNLOADABLE CONTENT. That's the biggest load of garbage I've ever seen, and genuinely breached the trust I had with Bioware.

That said, holy crap, Mass Effect 3 is an amazing game. The high points of Mass Effect 3 are easily the best moments in the entire franchise. The story is great. The setpieces are breathtaking. The quiet character moments are among the best the series has seen. The combat is the best it's ever been. You get to see all of your favorite Mass Effect characters, and see what's happened to all of them. You get to solve some of the biggest problems in the Mass Effect universe. You go to incredible locations. The game looks incredible (I'd easily say it's the best looking game on this list, other than the occasional odd looking human character).

My only complaint, aside from, as I said, an ending which Bioware should be absolutely ashamed of, was that the side missions were picked up in an incredibly halfhearted way, and completed as such.

The game also features multiplayer which, despite all odds, is absolutely fantastic. I do, admittedly, have some complaints with how the unlock system works, and would have preferred a store which let you choose unlocks, perhaps tied to your persistent N7 levels. Of course, the flipside of that is, the store (which, for the record, never requires you to spend a dime on unlocks, if you're willing to sink lots of time into the game) seems to have made them enough money that each multiplayer expansion, of which there have been several, all high quality, has been released for free. I think it's the best "horde mode" I've ever seen in a game.

It's a shame all anyone talks about from Mass Effect 3 seems to be the ending, because while the ending is a pile of hot garbage, the rest of the game is wonderful. If it hadn't been for that lackluster ending, this would have been an easy pick for my number one slot, because the game is just so utterly fantastic, and was a great ending to the trilogy... Up until the actual ending for the trilogy.

Mass Effect 3 is a great game. Not a good game, a great game. Aside from it's last ten minutes, I can't say enough good things about it (and I'm still playing the multiplayer all these months later). It's just a shame it had to end on such a sour note.

1 - The Walking Dead

Dear God... Dear God... The Walking Dead is unlike anything I've ever played. It's such an emotionally draining experience. It forces you with choices which, unlike many games with choices, don't have a clear right-or-wrong answer. It makes you care about characters, and then mercilessly kills them off. It's the first to really take advantage of the episodic method of storytelling, to the point where playing the episodes as they were released was, in my opinion, the best way to play them.

It tells a crazy story, in a horrible world. Yes, there are zombies, but just like the other form of The Walking Dead fiction, this story is about humans. For my money though, this is the best The Walking Dead there's ever been, and that's as someone who really likes the comics, and likes what he's seen of the TV Series.

The Walking Dead, while oppressive, and bleak, and tragic, is also a beautiful experience to have. The fact that it lets you-- that it makes you care about these fictional people so much, is utterly astounding.

If you haven't played The Walking Dead yet, you need to do so. It's an incredible experience, and a great story. There are a lot of reasons why I loved this game so much, but rather than describe them, I'll leave you with this: Play The Walking Dead. It's the first adventure game I've really, truly loved in a very long time.

The Significance of The Walking Dead (Spoiler Free Edition)

I really like Telltale's The Walking Dead. In fact, it's probably my favorite game of the year, and that's saying a lot. It's easily Telltale's best game, and I really liked Puzzle Agent, Poker Night At The Inventory, and what I played of Back To The Future. The Walking Dead is a game which, I feel, finally gets everything right that Telltale, and the video game industry in general, have been trying to get right for so long. I'd even go so far as to say that The Walking Dead feels like a progression of the medium.

For those who don't know, The Walking Dead, by Telltale Games, is an adventure game tie-in to Robert Kirkman's extremely popular comic series The Walking Dead. I say tie-in because, unlike the television show, Telltale's The Walking Dead is not an adaptation of the comic books. It tells a different story, with different characters (or occasional appearances by characters from the comic), set in the same world with the same zombies. It's even considered canonical with the comics, as a matter of fact.

The major "hook" of the game is that it presents you with extremely difficult choices, and gives you virtually no time to select them. Unlike the morality systems in games like Mass Effect series, though, these aren't black and white, right or wrong choices. In most cases, there's no "good" answer, and both options outright suck. The spirit of the game is simple, showing you the cold reality of what this sort of apocalypse would be like. Even those who jokingly (or seriously), say that they're ready for the zombie apocalypse to hit, will find themselves faced with situations they've never considered. And, even more interestingly, the series drama doesn't come purely from the zombies, it primarily comes from the people.

The episodic format for games has been around for a while, but I don't think it had really been done right until now. Telltale's experimented with it with things like Back to the Future, and that was all right, but splitting it into episodes like they did, didn't really add anything to the game that splitting it into chapters wouldn't have achieved. Poker Night at the Inventory was presented as the pilot for a new series, but that was two years ago, and nothing more has come of it. Even huge companies like Valve struggle with the format, as evidenced by the infamous lack of Half-Life 2: Episode 3.

The Walking Dead, however, actually feels like it benefits from the episodic format. The weight of each choice the series faces you with is so heavy that, to be honest, I felt like I needed the month long break between episodes. Each time I finished an episode, I felt like the worst person possible. In fact, this is the first episodic series I've played where my advice would be, even if you've waited for the full series to come out, give yourself some time between each episode to decompress, and reflect upon the choices you've made. I wouldn't have said that for the episodes of Half-Life 2, or for the episodes of Back to the Future. While it was fine that those game came in the episodic format, the episodic format did not inherently enhance the experience, as I felt it did with The Walking Dead. In fact, in the future, I hope Telltale sticks to the episodic format even more strictly, keeping a solid month by month release schedule, and sticks to it (although I realize why they would be hesitant to do so).

But what really makes The Walking Dead so special, in my opinion, and what makes it beat out great titles like Mass Effect 3, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Torchlight 2, FTL, or They Bleed Pixels, all astoundingly good titles in their own right, as my GOTY, is that it feels important to me. And it feels important to me for one specific reason; The Walking Dead is not fun. It is not a fun game. Allow me to explain.

Up until this point, games have always been about being fun. And don't get me wrong, that's great. I love fun games. But the thing is, The Walking Dead manages to be a great, super engaging experience, without being fun. The Walking Dead is not a fun experience. It's stressful. It's emotionally distressing. The choices you have to make are horrible. It makes you care about characters with wonderful writing, and then has horrible things, up to and including random senseless death, happen to them. It's a grueling experience, and the fact that it manages to be so engaging, and such a great experience, while also being one that's not "fun" in any sense of the word, seems super important to me.

Back when film was first invented, most of the earliest films were comedies. The reason why was simple, slapstick comedy is easy. That doesn't make it lesser by any means, and I absolutely believe that comedy can be art, but with the medium being so new, and so primitive, comedy, or eventually more "fun" adventure films, were a simple way for the medium to become established. Once people had started learning the medium, and it had become more established, we started seeing the beginnings of what film would become. It wasn't until the later days of silent films, and the early days of talkies would we see films start to tell dramatic stories which were designed to emotionally engage the viewer. Movies like Gone With the Wind, for example, couldn't have existed in the very earliest days of cinema, because the format wasn't established enough for anyone to know how to use it to effectively tell a dramatic story, so comedy (slapstick and otherwise), were used to learn, and evolve the medium. This was a very important step in the evolution of film.

I feel like that's what we're seeing here with video games. Before this point, games have been about fun. That's not a criticism, that's a fact. Even games which I feel are indisputably art, Bioshock, Wind Waker, Mass Effect, have been about providing the player with a fun experience. The Walking Dead is the first game where I wouldn't say that hold true. It's a great experience, it's a great story, it's a great game, but it's not "fun". I'm not sure if The Walking Dead is the first game to do this, but it's the first game I've ever felt this way about, and it's the first game to do this which I feel has achieved this level of success.

I don't think The Walking Dead is the Citizen Kane of gaming, by which I mean the game which will sort of legitimize the medium in the eyes of the art snob out there (not that it needs legitimization), but it does feel like a progression of the medium to me, and one which I'm excited to see. Everyone should go out and play The Walking Dead right now. It's a great game, and possibly a very significant one for the future. It's seen such success that Telltale, a studio which I feel has always struggled to find it's place, between mild successes like Back to the Future, or critical and financial flops like Jurassic Park, has already announced both a Season 2, and a game adaptation of another popular comic book series, Fables. Not only is Telltale's The Walking Dead the best The Walking Dead there's ever been, it's an astoundingly huge success, in a year where even big studios have been coming under fire for their restriction of player choice.

Go play The Walking Dead. It's really good.

Mobile Game Review - Wreck-It Ralph

Disney's Wreck-It Ralph (available on iOS and Android) as you might expect, is a game based on Disney's Wreck-It Ralph, an absolutely fantastic movie you should go see right away. More specifically, the game is a collection of three games, with a fourth to come, based on the games the characters visit during the film. As such, I should say a few things about the games individually.

Fix-It Felix Jr.

"Fix-It Felix Jr." is the actual arcade game which the main character of the film, Ralph, is from. You see the game quite a bit in the film, and I'm glad to say that not only does it look exactly like it appears there, but it's a lot of fun on it's own, even without the ties to the film. You play the title character, Fix-It Felix Jr., as you try to fix the windows which Ralph has wrecked, and avoid falling bricks and flying ducks. You also collect pies to grant you temporary invincibility, and double points gained during the effect.

As you climb the building, and rack up points for fixing windows (and not running out of time), the actual stage gets more complicated, as flower planters, and open blinds create obstacles  preventing you from moving in certain directions.

It's a simple concept, but one that's extremely difficult to master, especially as obstacles start appearing to limit your movement. This has quickly become one of my favorite games on my phone, and I highly recommend the game for this alone, the ninety nine cents are absolutely worth it for this alone, as this is a five star phone game.

Sugar Rush Sweet Climber

Unfortunately, while I still recommend the app purchase for the first game alone, the other two are... Not so great. Specifically, "Sugar Rush Sweet Climber" is practically worthless. The game plays as a Doodle Jump clone, and on paper there's nothing wrong with that, as Doodle Jump is a very, very fun game. Unfortunately, the issue arises with the fact that "Sugar Rush Sweet Climber" is oddly sluggish, and unresponsive to your movments, making it very difficult to play.

It's disappointing, too, as the actual "Sugar Rush" game seen in the movie is quite obviously a play on Mario Kart, and if they had released that game, in full, as an actual Mario Kart mobile clone, even if they had charged five dollars for it, that would have been really great. Unfortunately, the didn't and "Sugar Rush Sweet Climber" is a very disappointing, halfhearted effort.

Hero's Duty

"Hero's Duty" is better than "Sugar Rush Sweet Climber" purely because it's actually functional. This version of "Hero's Duty", unlike the one we see in the film, is a dual joystick shooter. It's... Fine, I guess. I mean, it works. If that's your thing, go for it I guess.

All I really have to say about this game is that there are much, much better dual joystick shooters on both iOS and Android. Ones which are actually creative, and fun. I'd recommend Beat Hazard Ultra, which just launched on Android a few days ago. Although it's a lot more than this app (and admittedly I haven't gotten the paid version on my phone yet, I've played a lot of the game on the computer), it's also a much more interesting, and inspired take on the game.

Again, it's disappointing that they didn't go the extra mile, and create the actual "Hero's Duty" game seen in the film. If they had created a first-person shoot like N.O.V.A. (a popular android FPS), and charged five or six bucks for it, just like with Sugar Rush, that would have been a much more interesting course to take, and one that I imagine would have paid off for them in the end.

There's a fourth game promised on a coming soon page, "Turbotime", which is seen in the film, but telling you how would be a spoiler. Personally, as "Turbotime" was supposed to be an 8-Bit racer in the film, I'm hoping they'll stick closer to the "Fix-It Felix Jr." method of actually creating a fun, interesting arcade game, instead of just making a crappy flash game which would have gotten stuck on Disney's website five years ago.

Don't get me wrong, this app is definitely worth your time and dollar, just know that while a third of the games included in the collection are fantastic, the other two are mediocre, to just plain bad.