tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32226966894751710712024-02-18T18:52:43.606-08:00Under the Suskan SunRead things that I've written, if for some reason you want to do that.Susquatchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04067561426934895146noreply@blogger.comBlogger71125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3222696689475171071.post-81537856918111081852021-01-10T08:37:00.001-08:002021-01-10T08:38:53.924-08:00My top ten list for just the worst year<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.imgur.com/le5cb4Y.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="333" data-original-width="580" src="https://i.imgur.com/le5cb4Y.jpg" /></a></div><p style="text-align: left;">Eugh. I shouldn't have waited to do this. My instinct with these top ten lists is always to hold off until the year's over, just in case any worthy contenders slip in at the last minute. But now 2020 is over and I'm forcing myself to think about the worst year of pretty much all of our lives for just a bit longer. I guess I can comfort myself with the knowledge that 2021 hasn't been a whole lot better so far. (Literally minutes after I typed that, Trump got permanently banned from Twitter, so I may have to retract.)</p><p style="text-align: left;">But the games were good! Some of them, anyway! I became quite a bit disillusioned with the AAA industry over the past year <span style="background-color: white;">– </span>both the games themselves and the culture surrounding their development <span style="background-color: white;">–</span> but anyone with both eyes open should have found plenty with which to distract themselves. And now, more than ever, we need distractions.</p><p style="text-align: left;">There were so many worthwhile contenders that, as always, I had trouble narrowing it down to ten. So here are a few honorable mentions, why I love them, and why they didn't quite make it:</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>• <i>Animal Crossing: New Horizons </i>(Switch). </b>Frustrating in how incomplete it feels and how slow the rollout of (largely underwhelming) updates has been, but it's hard to argue that this wasn't exactly the game that many of us needed at the precise moment that it arrived.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>• <i>Carrion </i>(PC).</b> A visceral and guilt-free delight featuring one of the most exquisitely animated creatures in the 2D space. Just desperately could've used a map.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>• <i>Microsoft Flight Simulator </i>(PC). </b>I've never played a flight sim before. Is this a good one? I don't know. I have nothing to compare it against. But it's one of the few genuinely singular experiences I've had in recent memory, in addition to being an obviously towering technical accomplishment.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>• <i>Star Wars Squadrons </i>(PSVR).</b> For most people, this was a solid but unremarkable dogfighter. For those of us lucky enough to experience it in VR, it was a <i>Star Wars </i>fan's dream come true. Campaign was a snore, but the multiplayer was exquisite.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>• <i>Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 </i>(PS4).</b> While it's not inherently new enough to quite justify a place on my list of 2020's most remarkable games, boy was it a pleasure to be reminded of just how fine-tuned and elemental the <i>Tony Hawk </i>series was right out of the gate.</p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><b></b></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><b><a href="https://i.imgur.com/W6cJEtR.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="326" data-original-width="580" src="https://i.imgur.com/W6cJEtR.jpg" /></a></b></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><b>10. <i>Iris and the Giant </i>(Switch)</b></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">It was a strong year for roguelikes, and while I suppose it was inevitable that they'd all be overshadowed by <i>Hades</i> (and not unjustifiably so), it's a bit criminal just how few people seem to have even heard of the lovely <i>Iris and the Giant</i>. It adequately scratches that <i>Slay the Spire </i>deckbuilding itch, and while it's not as deep, its simplicity is ultimately its greatest weapon. Part of that is in the perfectly readable visuals (which limit the number of colors and shapes to make every character design immediately distinct), and part of it is the focus on small numbers, where most attacks do only one point of damage and it's all about enemy positioning and prioritization. There's an almost chess-like quality to the gap between the number of things the player needs to learn versus the number of options they have at any given time. The extra campaigns are a bit overly harsh for my liking, but the central story feels perfectly weighted and more than stands on its own two feet.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><b></b></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><b><a href="https://i.imgur.com/jaGLrPs.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="326" data-original-width="580" src="https://i.imgur.com/jaGLrPs.jpg" /></a></b></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><b>9. <i>Ghostrunner </i>(PC)</b></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">The game of 2020 with the greatest disparity between the amount that I personally enjoyed it and the number of people I would recommend it to. That's backed up by numbers, as well </span><span style="background-color: white;">– when I first announced on Twitter that I'd begun playing <i>Ghostrunner</i>, numerous people warned me that I'd hate it before long. This thankfully didn't wind up being the case, though the game's <i>extremely </i>demanding brand of cyborg ninja action </span><span style="background-color: white;">– which requires players to clear entire rooms without taking any damage, <i>Katana Zero</i>-style </span><span style="background-color: white;">– will undoubtedly turn many people off (particularly if they're playing with a controller). And it took a clear toll on me, given that my hand was in literal physical pain by the time the credits rolled. Yet even considering that, I was still sad to see it end, which should speak to how satisfying I found it to draw those perfect lines through each chamber. A new hardcore difficulty was recently patched in, and I may just double-dip.</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> (</span><a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/ghostrunner-review/" style="font-family: inherit;">Review.</a><span style="font-family: inherit;">)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><b></b></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><b><a href="https://i.imgur.com/KAydFJQ.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="326" data-original-width="580" src="https://i.imgur.com/KAydFJQ.jpg" /></a></b></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><b>8. <i>Ori and the Will of the Wisps </i>(PC)</b></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">At the start of the year, Moon Studios were responsible for the best Metroidvania of the last generation, and now they're responsible for <i>both </i>of the best Metroidvanias of the past generation. Much of what makes the <i>Ori </i>games special is right there on the surface </span><span style="background-color: white;">– the gorgeous visuals that so seamlessly blend 2D and 3D that it's difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins, and a score by Gareth Coker that somehow tops his work on the original. But it's also about the fluid movement systems, which are such a joy to engage in that even the obligatory underwater level is wonderful. Some people find the <i>Ori </i>games cloying, and I can't say I necessarily blame them </span><span style="background-color: white;">– this series paints broad strokes with the thickest possible brush, pitting tiny, adorable creatures against massive, hideous monstrosities. It's straightforward and it's not inherently <i>about </i>anything, but I can't argue with the results, particularly when it comes to <i>Will of the Wisps</i>' absolute gut punch of an ending. The developers, now two-for-two, have hinted that they'd like to move on to something else for their next project, and I can't imagine them leaving this series on a higher note.</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> (</span><a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/ori-and-the-will-of-the-wisps-review/" style="font-family: inherit;">Review.</a><span style="font-family: inherit;">)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><b></b></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><b><a href="https://i.imgur.com/6wbNeaG.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="326" data-original-width="580" src="https://i.imgur.com/6wbNeaG.jpg" /></a></b></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><b>7. <i>Mortal Shell </i>(PC)</b></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">I play virtually every major soulslike to see a release, and none have come closer to replicating From Software's secret recipe than <i>Mortal Shell</i>. It comes from a small studio that purportedly consists of AAA veterans, and they wisely elected not to spread themselves too thin, narrowing the scope to a mere four levels. The result is a relatively brief campaign that nevertheless has the polish and extravagant visuals of a more prolific product. The "story" feels more like a tone piece, examining the curse of immortality in the form of a nameless parasite forced to attach himself to others whose lives had purpose. It's a neat premise, but the real star is the weighty and satisfying combat itself. Removing the Estus flask from a <i>Souls </i>game and making parrying your primary means of recovering health would be disastrous without <i>perfectly </i>tuned controls and collision, and <i>Mortal Shell </i>thankfully falls on the fair side of the challenge line. Those overwhelming opening hours soon fade away in comparison to the immense satisfaction of discovering and mastering these systems. (<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/mortal-shell-review/">Review.</a>)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><b></b></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><b><a href="https://i.imgur.com/SAdvtVX.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="326" data-original-width="580" src="https://i.imgur.com/SAdvtVX.jpg" /></a></b></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><b>6. <i>The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners </i>(Vive)</b></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">Here's the game that achieved the impossible and made me fall in love with the zombie survival genre. The most obvious factor is the VR implementation, which manages to combine motion controls with melee combat in such a way that feels like witchcraft. It shouldn't work. I swing a bat at a zombie, and while the in-game bat connects with my target, my real-life arms, which aren't actually holding a bat, should continue moving through the air, meeting zero resistance. Yet <i>Saints & Sinners </i>finds some sort of miraculous middle ground, making zombies an actual joy to fight (a rarity in videogames, if you ask me) and advancing VR in ways not even Valve attempted this year. And while I won't say that they cut <i>zero </i>corners, particularly on the technical side of things, this is still an uncommonly meaty and fully-featured single-player campaign in the VR market, with a satisfying loop and an unexpected immersive sim bent that leaves ample room for player expression. It was a strong year for VR, and were it not for that one <i>other </i>game, this would sit at the top of the pile. (<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/the-walking-dead-saints-sinners-review/">Review.</a>)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><b></b></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><b><a href="https://i.imgur.com/tcb2dFV.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="326" data-original-width="580" src="https://i.imgur.com/tcb2dFV.jpg" /></a></b></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><b>5. <i>Streets of Rage 4 </i>(PC)</b></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">I'm in a bit of a weird position here. For the entirety of my adult life, I've taken pride in my ability to illuminate in writing what makes a game succeed or fail, and yet I can't adequately explain why I adore <i>Streets of Rage 4</i> so much. Admittedly, I'm something of a stranger to the beat-'em-up genre. I only tried this because it was on Game Pass, and I initially didn't understand it. (There's no dodge or block? Then how do I defend?!) But once I got myself on its wavelength, not only did I recognize <i>Streets of Rage 4</i> as a marvelously elegant title that doesn't overshoot in any particular area, but I wound up appreciating how little it dumbed itself down for a new generation that might have been less receptive to it. This catered to the established fanbase first and foremost, and counted on positive word-of-mouth from <i>those </i>people to inspire the rest of us to hop aboard. And it worked on me, as I'm now actively on the lookout for other beat-'em-ups to carry the torch. But I won't be surprised if none of the competition feel quite as refined in every aspect as this thing does.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.imgur.com/wXtwM7e.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="326" data-original-width="580" src="https://i.imgur.com/wXtwM7e.jpg" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><b>4. <i>Yakuza: Like a Dragon </i>(PC)</b></span><p></p><p>I know this one's been getting praised everywhere, but it still feels odd to place it so high on my list. It's <i>Yakuza</i>, and I've never quite been able to get into the series despite years of my friends trying to convince me that it's incredible. It's also a JRPG, and I traditionally don't like those. Plus, I still haven't even finished it, and I hate to give anything my highest recommendation until I've seen it through to the end. But that just underlines how enamored I currently am with Ryu Ga Gotoku's characteristically wacky (yet also surprisingly sympathetic) look at impoverished street life through the eyes of the world's most optimistic and undeterred man. Dropping the baggage of the mainline series' seven-game story arc provides someone like me with the perfect entry point, and the turn-based overhaul to the combat is such a substantial improvement that, if anything, I'm even less interested than ever in diving back into the entries that <i>aren't </i>like this. I guess it remains to be seen if <i>Like a Dragon </i>can maintain its hot streak all the way to the credits, but until then, I'll be spending all of my time either playing it or fantasizing about returning to it.</p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><b></b></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><b><a href="https://i.imgur.com/vJNCLw8.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="326" data-original-width="580" src="https://i.imgur.com/vJNCLw8.jpg" /></a></b></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><b>3. <i>Hades </i>(Switch)</b></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">The splash it made this year was so vast, and the positive consensus so universal, that it almost feels like I'm wasting my time at this point by reiterating that, yes, <i>Hades </i>really is as good as everyone says it is. Supergiant's previous three releases all contained the individual ingredients to create an all-timer between them, but I don't believe the studio has ever <i>quite </i>been firing on all cylinders the way they are here. By incorporating repeated escape attempts and subsequent deaths into its narrative structure and enhancing it all with a frankly confounding amount of charismatically voiced dialogue, <i>Hades</i> has forever expanded our perception of what roguelikes are capable of, and its simple core combat serves as the perfect foundation for the seemingly endless build combinations that keep runs fresh and exciting after dozens of hours. Even the genre's detractors were forced to admit that, yeah, this thing is a masterpiece. (<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/hades-review/">Review.</a>)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><b></b></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><b><a href="https://i.imgur.com/68v06kc.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="326" data-original-width="580" src="https://i.imgur.com/68v06kc.jpg" /></a></b></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><b>2. <i>Umurangi Generation </i>(PC)</b></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Umurangi Generation </i>probably got the most potent emotional response from me of any game released this year, and the fact that it did so without a single cutscene or line of dialogue is a testament to the method in which it quietly sets the pieces and tells a story. On the surface, it's a photography game in which we search relatively small levels for bounties. But in the grander scheme of things, it's about finding and preserving beauty and humanity in the face of terrifying circumstances that are beyond our control, and goddamn if "terrifying circumstances beyond our control" wasn't the running theme of 2020. <i>Umurangi</i>'s outlandish future is hardly a one-to-one model of our own reality, but anyone with even a moderately vested interest in where our society is headed will relate to the disaffected youth at this campaign's heart, who can only blast music and tag walls to distract themselves from the grim world that their parents built for them. (<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/umurangi-generation-review/">Review.</a>)</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.imgur.com/6G4STmd.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="326" data-original-width="580" src="https://i.imgur.com/6G4STmd.jpg" /></a></div><b style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: large;">1. <i>Half-Life: Alyx </i>(Vive)</span></b><p></p><div style="text-align: left;">I think it goes without saying at this point that <i>Half-Life: Alyx </i>is VR's uncontested killer app, cleverly sidestepping many of the issues that have plagued those that came before it (those gravity gloves are a work of genius) and giving us a glimpse at what it would look like if AAA developers truly embraced VR as a path forward for the medium as a whole. But that almost buries the even bigger lede here. For thirteen years, we've been begging for <i>Half-Life </i>to return. This year, it finally did. No, it's not <i>Half-Life 3</i>, but it perfectly recaptures everything that made its predecessors classics, <i>and </i>it advances the established lore in spite of its position as a prequel. This was perhaps the worst possible year to try to sell people on an expensive <span style="font-family: inherit;">piece of experimental hardware, but for the precious few longtime <i>Half-Life </i>fans who were able to experience it, <i>Alyx </i>was a godsend <span style="background-color: white;">–</span> a stunnin</span>g return to form for a developer that's been out of the single-player scene for ages, a worthy comeback for one of the industry's most storied franchises, and one of the best games I've ever played. (<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/half-life-alyx-review/">Review.</a>)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Most overrated: </b><i>Ghost of Tsushima /</i> <i>The Last of Us Part II </i>(tie)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Most underrated: </b><i>Mortal Shell</i><br /><b>Most overlooked: </b><i>Iris and the Giant<br /></i><b>Best-looking: </b><i>Ghost of Tsushima</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Most visually striking: </b><i>Paper Beast</i><br /><b>Best original soundtrack:</b><i><b> </b>Streets of Rage 4<br /></i><b>Best story: </b><i>In Other Waters<br /></i><b>Best writing: </b><i>Wide Ocean Big Jacket<br /></i><b>Best character: </b>Ichiban Kasuga (<i>Yakuza: Like a Dragon</i>)<br /><b>Best performance: </b>Ashley Johnson (<i>The Last of Us Part II</i>)<br /><b>Funniest game: </b><i>Paper Mario: The Origami King</i><br /><b>Biggest surprise: </b><i>Streets of Rage 4</i><br /><b>Biggest disappointment: </b><i>Doom Eternal</i><br /><b>Comeback of the year: </b><i>Half-Life: Alyx</i><br /><b>Best multiplayer game: </b><i>Star Wars Squadrons</i><br /><b>Most enjoyable bad game: </b><i>Fight Crab</i><br /><b>Least enjoyable good game: </b><i>Paradise Killer</i><br /><b>Best free game: </b><i>Genshin Impact</i><br /><b>Game that I spent the most time with: </b><i>Animal Crossing: New Horizons</i><br /><b>Game that I spent the least time with before dismissing: </b><i>MetaChampions</i><br /><b>Game that I most wanted to play, but didn't: </b><i>Astro's Playroom</i><br /><b>Game I literally own that I most wanted to play, but still haven't: </b><i>Crusader Kings III</i><br /><b>Best game that I still haven't finished: </b><i>Yakuza: Like a Dragon</i><br /><b>All-out worst game that I played: </b><i>Battletoads</i><br /><b>Best non-2020 game that I first played in 2020: </b><i>Hitman 2</i><br /><b>Best remake/re-release:</b><span><b> </b><i>Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2</i></span><br /><b>Most anticipated game this coming year: </b><i>Hitman 3</i></div>Susquatchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04067561426934895146noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3222696689475171071.post-62604648340724411302020-06-23T13:08:00.000-07:002020-07-23T13:24:22.175-07:00The Last of Us Part II is a muddled, senseless cacophony of unearned misery [SPOILERS]<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Christ, I don't even know where to start.<br />
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I guess I can start by saying that it all makes sense now. I have friends who played <i>The Last of Us Part II </i>pre-release and were embargoed from discussing <i>anything </i>plot-related even though said plot was leaked in its entirety a month or so prior. Sony is notoriously protective of their first-party games, to the point that (if a writer on my Twitter timeline is to be believed) critics weren't even allowed to mention that Dr. Octavius was in Insomniac's <i>Spider-Man </i>even though he first shows up, like, within the first twenty minutes.<br />
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The fuss surrounding <i>TLOU2</i>'s story isn't overblown, though. The game is legitimately full of shocks and turns, aided by a deliberately misleading marketing campaign that paints Joel as having a much different role in the game than he does. And while a great deal of the outcry has unfortunately been centered on the game's politics and diverse representation, I'm worried that the ideological debates will drown out the <i>real </i>reasons that this plot doesn't work.<br />
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The weekend prior to <i>TLOU2</i>'s release, I replayed the original for the first time since its release. Not only do I still love it, but I was struck as much as ever by its maturity, particularly from the same studio responsible for the enjoyable but lightweight and silly <i>Uncharted </i>series. The game is remarkably light on flashy set pieces and witty one-liners, opting instead to portray a serious, intimate human drama -- something incredibly rare in the AAA space.<br />
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What's equally rare for this industry is that <i>TLOU </i>had a perfect ending, in which the player character makes the decision to essentially doom humanity to save the life of a single person. On a material level, it renders the whole journey meaningless, yet in a game that is entirely about the burgeoning relationship between two characters, this one action underlines just how far they've come.<br />
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And then the game exercises the restraint to just cut to credits almost immediately afterward and let us write the rest of the story in our minds from there. Could Joel face repercussions for what he did? Does he have regrets? Does Ellie believe his story? How would she react if she found out the truth? These are all interesting questions that Naughty Dog was wise to leave hanging, because they're all secondary to the progress Joel has made as a character. Agree with his actions or not, at least you understand why he made them.<br />
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For those reasons, I was apprehensive about the announcement of a sequel, and I'm sad to report that my fears were well-founded. Let's go through it, but be warned: <b><span style="color: #cc0000;">SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT.</span></b><br />
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Let's start with the main event: Joel's death. This was the one thing I'd had spoiled for me ahead of time, but I was still caught off guard by how early it happens. It is, in fact, the instigating event that sets the greater plot in motion. Trailers made it clear that <i>TLOU2 </i>is a revenge story, and strongly hinted that Ellie's girlfriend Dina was the victim. In actuality, Dina survives the entire game and it's Joel who gets killed off during the game's prologue, when a newcomer named Abby bashes his skull in with a golf club while Ellie watches.<br />
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Now, I don't actually have a problem with Joel dying. Many people seem to think it's done purely for shock value, which I disagree with. Although it's not immediately spelled out who Abby and her friends are or why they've come to Jackson to kill Joel (and <i>only </i>Joel; crucially, Ellie and Tommy are in the room as well but are spared), anyone's first assumption should be that it's payback for Joel's choice at the end of the first <i>TLOU</i>. Regardless of how you feel about Joel and whether or not he made the right call, there's no denying that his choice to potentially rob humanity of a cure to the zombie infection leaves him vulnerable to this sort of retaliation.<br />
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The more interesting question is whether Sony and Naughty Dog were being shady in their choice to mis-market <i>TLOU2</i> as featuring Joel more prominently than it actually does, as there are scenes in the trailers that don't appear in the final game. I see both sides of the argument. On one hand, if fans pick up on the facts that (a) this is a revenge story and (b) Joel doesn't seem to be anywhere in sight, they may prematurely guess the twist. On the other hand, those who wanted Joel to have a greater presence have a sound argument in being misled. It's a fascinating debate, but one that's somewhat irrelevant to the quality of the game in and of itself.<br />
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Plenty of people also just... don't want Joel to die, and it kicks off the running theme that <i>TLOU2</i> wants you to suffer, to feel the pain of the characters within its narrative. And hey, we're much more on Ellie's side in her quest for vengeance than if it had been Dina, a character we've just met.<br />
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So both Ellie and Tommy want revenge. Based on the patches that Abby's group were wearing, they believe that the perpetrators belong to the Washington Liberation Front (WLF) out of Seattle. Tommy heads off by himself, hoping to avoid putting Ellie in danger, but she naturally follows close behind, with Dina accompanying her. We smash cut to Seattle and the game properly begins.<br />
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The first half of the game is relatively straightforward from there. Ellie and Dina chase various leads, encountering and killing numerous members of Abby's group in pursuit of the top dog. The couple take shelter in an abandoned movie theater and share some sweet moments. Dina believes herself to be pregnant by her ex-boyfriend, Jesse, who has followed them to Seattle and aids them in their quest to kill Abby and bring Tommy home.<br />
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As all of this is happening, various pieces are being set in the background. The WLF, or "Wolves," are engaged in a turf war with a religious cult called the Seraphites (or "Scars") who believe that pre-infection technology is sinful. We also catch snippets of conversations hinting that there's some sort of internal drama with the Wolves and that Abby isn't in great standing with her own people. Interspersed with the present-day stuff, we get a few flashbacks centered on the relationship between Joel and Ellie in the years between the two games, with the latter expressing remorse that her immunity couldn't be used to save people, and beginning to express doubt with Joel's story.<br />
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Ellie eventually beats a woman named Nora for information on Abby's whereabouts. In the process, Nora comes very close to revealing <i>why</i> they killed Joel, but Ellie isn't interested. Although we're initially meant to believe that she's simply single-mindedly focused on bringing Joel's killers to justice, a flashback soon drops the game's first major bombshell: that a couple of years prior, Ellie forced Joel to reveal the truth about what happened in Salt Lake City. We'd been operating on the assumption that Ellie had been unaware of Joel's choice and would uncover the grim truth at some point in her journey, when in actuality she's known about it the whole time and is determined to find Joel's killers anyway.<br />
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Complicating things further, Ellie's reaction when Joel reveals the truth is, understandably, one of horror and disgust. Although she stays in Jackson, she makes it clear that she wants nothing to do with Joel ever again. Which raises the question of why she embarked on this journey, though Naughty Dog leaves that thread hanging for a while.<br />
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On Nora's tip, Ellie travels to an aquarium where she encounters two more members of Abby's group, a couple named Owen and Mel, though things turn violent and both die before Ellie can extract any information from them. (Ellie realizes afterwards that Mel was pregnant, which horrifies her.) She then finally rendezvouses with Tommy, but having exhausted all leads, the four agree to pack up and head home.<br />
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As they're about to leave, though, Abby shows up at the theater, killing Jesse and badly wounding Tommy. She's clearly very cross with the group for killing all of her friends, particularly after she consciously spared Ellie and Tommy back in Jackson. And then <i>TLOU2</i> drops its second major bombshell: that players control Abby for almost the entire second half of the campaign, as we rewind the clock and experience the events of the last three days from her perspective.<br />
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This is the root of much of the (and I am already so sick of this word) <i>discourse</i> surrounding <i>TLOU2</i>. Not only is Joel killed off within the first two hours by a character we've never seen before, but the game then attempts to make us sympathize with her by shifting the focus away from Ellie for most of the second half. There are so many possible motivations on Naughty Dog's part for doing this, and nearly as many reasons why the choice has been met with hostility since the plot leaked a month or two ago.<br />
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The bulk of the conversation seems to have centered on the fact that Abby is <i>possibly </i>trans. I say "possibly" because it's never blatantly spelled out. She goes by female pronouns but is unusually butch in appearance, and that's <i>almost</i> the extent of it. Later, however, she befriends a Scar boy named Lev who <i>does</i> explicitly identify as trans, and who's being persecuted by the cult for coming out. Abby protects Lev for the remainder of the game, even from fellow Wolves, and when Lev asserts that Abby is killing her own people, she counters, "<i>You're </i>my people."<br />
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So there's definitely a gender identity thing going on, and while it's not really the focus of the plot, it's enough to make the transphobic gamers among us uncomfortable, particularly when Abby and Owen have a sex scene midway through this portion of the story. And hey, I'm glad they're uncomfortable, and I hope they stay uncomfortable. But in case you're wondering why <i>TLOU2</i> has been so widely labeled "SJW propaganda," there's your answer.<br />
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<b><i>[Edit: The more I read about this, the less convinced I am that this interpretation of Abby is correct. But it's still worth bringing up because it's the conclusion that a lot of gaming's less desirable folks have been jumping to, and judging the game for.]</i></b><br />
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Anyway, Abby's motivation for killing Joel, it turns out, was <i>exactly </i>what I'd predicted in my mind. Not only was Abby a Firefly stationed in Salt Lake City when Joel massacred the group, but her father was the surgeon who was going to operate on Ellie. So both of our protagonists have set out to avenge the deaths of their fathers or father figures. These are what we call parallels, children.<br />
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In the present day, Owen has gone AWOL because he's exhausted by all of the violence. He hopes to repair an old sailboat he found out by the aquarium and chase a rumor that the Fireflies have regrouped in Santa Barbara. He and Abby used to date years ago, and even though he recently impregnated Mel, their feelings for each other prompt Abby to abandon her post. After rescuing Lev just as a major battle between the Wolves and Scars erupts, Abby returns to the aquarium only to find Owen and Mel lying cold and dead in a pool of blood, just as the group were about to set off for a better life.<br />
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However you may feel about Abby's portion of the campaign, there's no denying that it's a bold move on Naughty Dog's part. To kill off one of gaming's most beloved characters and then force us to spend half of the game in the shoes of the one who did the deed, and attempt to make us <i>sympathize </i>with her? That takes balls, and as it was unfolding, my mind was racing over the possibilities of where Neil Druckmann and company were taking this.<br />
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Unfortunately, as much as I <i>want </i>to like Abby given all of the bigoted nonsense that's been slung her way, and simple truth is that whatever magic Naughty Dog cast to create two of gaming's most convincingly human characters in the first <i>TLOU</i> seems to have been drained when they got around to writing the sequel. Actress Laura Bailey does fine work in the role, but Abby is cold, stern and distant, even in scenes that are meant to be tender and lighthearted. While the plot had me intrigued just out of its sheer audacity to flip the tables like this, in practice, the back half of the Seattle portion bored me to tears because I didn't care about anyone involved.<br />
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Of course, during this stretch, I was assuming that Naughty Dog's endgame was to underline that the hero of one story is the villain of another, and vice versa. This is further reinforced when we finally catch up to the standoff in the theater and we, still in control of Abby, are forced into a boss fight against Ellie. This is the point when the story takes a particularly ugly turn, as whatever state of mind Naughty Dog wanted me to be in by the time I had to start beating the sweet, spunky girl from <i>TLOU </i>into a bloody pulp, I wasn't. At least I'm <i>invested </i>in Ellie's particular side of the story, even if I don't yet know how I'm supposed to feel about her motivations.<br />
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Abby wins and nearly kills Ellie. Dina intervenes, but Abby overcomes <i>her</i> as well and is about to slit her throat. Ellie exclaims that Dina is pregnant, to which Abby replies "good" and very nearly goes through with it, until Lev runs in and gets all weepy-eyed about it. Abby then decides on a whim to let it go, and warns Ellie that she never wants to see her again. Everyone leaves Seattle and the credits roll.<br />
<br />
Just kidding. Though <i>TLOU2 </i>has already run the length of at least two games by this point, we still have an epilogue to get through, and this is where the plot goes completely off the rails.<br />
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Some time later, Ellie and Dina are living on a farm with the latter's baby. They get a visit from Tommy, who I <i>swear to god</i> I saw get shot in the head by Abby earlier, but I guess he survived that, as you do. Anyway, he shares a tip that Abby has possibly been spotted in Santa Barbara. Dina interjects that they've left that life behind, which is the smart answer, but Ellie still has PTSD about Joel's death and tries to sneak out in the middle of the night to hunt Abby. Dina catches her and promises that if Ellie leaves, their relationship is over. Ellie leaves anyway.<br />
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Cut to Santa Barbara. Abby and Lev manage to get in contact with the reformed Fireflies via radio, but on the way to the rendezvous, they're capturing by the Rattlers. Who are the Rattlers, you ask? I have no idea. I think maybe they're slavers? They have a bunch of people imprisoned at their compound, and they also have some zombies chained up for their amusement. It's possible that there's some rape going on. Maybe I was just filling in the blanks by this point. They're bad dudes, in any case.<br />
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Anyway, Ellie arrives on the coast a few months later and nearly gets captured by a couple of Rattlers herself. The encounter leaves her with a grisly injury that serves <i>no purpose</i> in the story, and this was around the time that the game's violence started to come across as a bit depraved to me. She finds out that Abby is imprisoned at a nearby compound, and realizing that she's currently suffering a worse fate than Ellie could ever inflict on her, she finally lets it go and heads back to her comfortable life.<br />
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Just kidding. She infiltrates the compound with the apparent intention of... rescuing Abby? She liberates the camp's prisoners, who tell her that Abby attempted to escape not long ago, and that she's been taken to "the pillars," where she's likely already dead. The pillars are out on the beach, and they're where misbehaving prisoners get hung up to slowly die of exposure. She finds Abby there, who's barely clinging to life, and realizing that Abby is definitively about to die, she <i>finally</i>, at long last, gives up on this empty quest and returns home.<br />
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One more time: JUST KIDDING. She cuts Abby down, and Abby rescues Lev, who's also been tied up. The three then head to the water where they intend to escape on some boats that have been hitched up, but of course Ellie announces her intention to finally exact revenge.<br />
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And here's the part where <i>TLOU2</i>, in its final moments, fully lost me. Ellie throws her to the ground, but Abby exclaims that she refuses to fight back. That's not good enough for Ellie. She <i>needs </i>Abby to fight back, for reasons I cannot begin to fathom. And to make her fight back, Ellie, who earlier panicked over unknowingly killing a pregnant woman, pulls out her knife and holds it to Lev's neck, threatening to kill him -- an <i>innocent child</i> -- if Abby doesn't consent to a mandatory final boss.<br />
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So a fistfight ensues between two characters who are inexplicably still able to throw punches despite one of them having been spiked in the abdomen and another having been hung out for god knows how long to die of hunger and thirst. Abby bites a couple of Ellie's fingers off, but Ellie gets the upper hand, pins Abby down in some shallow water, and begins to drown her.<br />
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And then she just... stops. Despite having given up everything and killed countless people to pursue a quest of vengeance that she's seconds away from fulfilling, she just stops. She releases Abby, who rides off with Lev, and that's it. After everything she's done, after all of the ways in which she's shed her humanity, she chose this moment to get the memo that Violence Is Bad, Actually.<br />
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I imagine the entire plot of <i>TLOU2</i> is colored by each individual player's opinion on whether Joel's death was justified. But I'm convinced that no matter which side of the fence you fall on, this ending doesn't work. If you want Joel avenged and create hundreds of fresh corpses on a mission to do so, it's a little silly to be stopped at the last minute because Ellie had a momentary vision of Joel, when visions of Joel were what prompted her to go on this killing spree in the first place.<br />
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And if, like me, you at least <i>understand </i>why Joel had a target on his back, well, what the hell was the point of all of this? To underline that revenge is a vicious cycle, that violence begets violence? We know that, Naughty Dog. We know that from the countless other forms of fiction that have made the same point.<br />
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But I'm not even convinced that that <i>was</i> the point, despite it being the most obvious read of the climactic scene. Because if the whole message is that it takes one side to break the cycle rather than perpetuate it, then the game would have ended when <i>Abby</i> did that in the theater, letting Ellie go a second time despite it clearly being in her best interest to end it right then and there. <i>That </i>decision muddled whatever point Naughty Dog was trying to make with this mess. Violence begets violence, but walking away also begets violence, apparently? So just do whatever you want and hope that it works out?<br />
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We get one more flashback about how Joel and Ellie kinda-sorta reconciled about the Salt Lake City incident the night before Joel was killed. She's upset that he took away her agency, her chance to make a difference. Although he's clearly remorseful about hurting her, he also firmly states that if given a second chance, he'd make the same decision. She responds that she can't forgive him for that, but would like to try, and the scene ends with a glimmer of hope that maybe their relationship can be salvaged.<br />
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Is it a big enough glimmer to justify Ellie's transformation into a cold-blooded murderer who would threaten to slit an innocent child's throat? I would most definitely argue that it isn't. But in isolation, it's a wonderfully subtle scene. In fact, the flashbacks between Joel and Ellie are <i>TLOU2</i>'s one unqualified high point, because they build on what made the first game so good. These scenes have no misguided delusions to being profound. They <i>simply </i>depict an organic relationship between two of the most shockingly well-realized characters in interactive fiction.<br />
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Meanwhile, in the dour present, Ellie returns to the farmhouse to find it abandoned, Dina having made good on her promise to leave. She picks up Joel's guitar, the one reminder she has of the man whose death inspired this rampage, but is unable to play it because she's missing two of her fingers. She's lost everything in her pursuit of vengeance, chief among them the audience's affinity for her. She then sets off to an uncertain future, and I could not care less where she ends up.<br />
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Subverting expectations, killing your darlings, making audiences question what they held dear... these are all things that I can support <i>in theory</i>. But it needs to be in service of believable character growth and consistent underlying themes. <i>TLOU2</i> is a story in which a bunch of unlikable assholes make stupid, irrational decisions and suffer endlessly for them. And crucially, that's <i>all </i>that it is, despite the game's cadence of being high art.<br />
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There's been a lot of talk about the violence in <i>TLOU2</i> and the way that the game tries to make players feel guilty for the deeds they're forced to carry out. Honestly, it's nothing I haven't seen in other titles. But I can dismiss the sleaziness of, say, the rebooted <i>Tomb Raider </i>trilogy because I was never emotionally invested in Lara Croft to begin with.<br />
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But Naughty Dog is better than this. Neil Druckmann is better than this. I know, because in the original <i>TLOU</i>, they found beauty and humanity in unspeakable ugliness. <i>TLOU2 </i>does the inverse: it takes that beauty and drowns it in a bloated, prolonged cacophony of unearned misery. And try as I may to hold the first <i>TLOU</i> in the same high regard that I did a week ago, it's difficult to think back on the extraordinary character dynamic at the heart of that game without being reminded of the senseless queasiness that followed. And that's crueler than any lone act of simulated violence could ever be.Susquatchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04067561426934895146noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3222696689475171071.post-69090522550469158592020-02-08T23:31:00.001-08:002020-02-09T23:26:52.578-08:00I suppose these are my Oscar predictions<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: #cc0000;"><strike><b>Best Picture: </b><i>1917</i></strike></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><strike><b>Best Director:</b> Sam Mendes (<i>1917</i>)</strike></span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Best Actor: </b>Joaquin Phoenix (<i>Joker</i>)</span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Best Actress: </b><span style="background-color: white;">Renée Zellweger (</span><i>Judy</i><span style="background-color: white;">)</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #38761d;"><b>Best Supporting Actor: </b>Brad Pitt (<i>Once Upon a Time in Hollywood</i>)</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #38761d;"><b>Best Supporting Actress: </b>Laura Dern (<i>Marriage Story</i>)</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #38761d;"><b>Best Original Screenplay: </b><i>Parasite</i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #38761d;"><b>Best Adapted Screenplay: </b><i>Jojo Rabbit</i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #38761d;"><b>Best Animated Feature: </b><i>Toy Story 4</i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #38761d;"><b>Best Documentary Feature: </b><i>American Factory</i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #38761d;"><b>Best International Feature: </b><i>Parasite</i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #38761d;"><b>Best Cinematography: </b><i>1917</i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #38761d;"><b>Best Costume Design: </b><i>Little Women</i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #38761d;"><b>Best Documentary Short Subject: </b><i>Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You're a Girl)</i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #38761d;"><b>Best Film Editing: </b><i>Ford v Ferrari</i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #38761d;"><b>Best Makeup and Hairstyling: </b><i>Bombshell</i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #38761d;"><b>Best Original Score: </b><i>Joker</i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #38761d;"><b>Best Original Song: </b>"(I'm Gonna) Love Me Again" (<i>Rocketman</i>)</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #cc0000;"><strike><b>Best Production Design: </b><i>Parasite</i></strike></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #38761d;"><b>Best Animated Short Film: </b><i>Hair Love</i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #cc0000;"><strike><b>Best Live-Action Short Film: </b><i>Brotherhood</i></strike></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #cc0000;"><strike><b>Best Sound Editing: </b><i>1917</i></strike></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #38761d;"><b>Best Sound Mixing: </b><i>1917</i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #cc0000;"><strike><b>Best Visual Effects: </b><i>The Irishman</i></strike></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="background-color: white;">And just for fun, here are my preferred winners for categories in which I predicted something else, i.e. I hope I'm wrong about these:</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><i><br /></i></span>
<b>Best Picture: </b><i>Parasite</i><br />
<b>Best Director:</b> Bong Joon-ho (<i>Parasite</i>)<br />
<b>Best Supporting Actress: </b>Florence Pugh (<i>Little Women</i>)<br />
<b>Best Original Screenplay: </b><i>Knives Out</i><br />
<b>Best Adapted Screenplay: </b><i>The Irishman</i><br />
<b>Best Cinematography: </b><i>The Lighthouse</i><br />
<b>Best Film Editing: </b><i>Parasite</i><br />
<b>Best Live-Action Short: </b><i>A Sister</i><br />
<b>Best Sound Mixing: </b><i>Ford v Ferrari</i>Susquatchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04067561426934895146noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3222696689475171071.post-39098918065614089232019-12-30T14:37:00.000-08:002020-01-02T04:20:50.646-08:00My top ten for 2019 or whatever<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Hey! I don't have much to say. It was an okay year. Here are some honorable mentions:<br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><b>• <i>Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown </i>(PS4).</b> The already sizable campaign is needlessly lengthened by a <i>brutal </i>checkpoint system, but the combat itself slaps, and the VR missions are magnificent.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><b>• <i>Apex Legends </i>(PC).</b> I don't know if <i>another </i>damn battle royale game is a suitable replacement for <i>Titanfall 3</i>, but this is arguably the best of its kind, and ate a lot of my hours this year.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><b>• <i>Luigi's Mansion 3 </i>(Switch).</b> I missed the second one, and the leap in quality from the original is <i>astounding</i>. Just wish there was more to do with all of this damn money.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><b>• <i>Resident Evil 2 </i>(PC).</b> I'm only allowing one remake on my top ten list, but let's not overlook the fact that I played through this, like, seven times.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white;"><b>• <i>Untitled Goose Game </i>(Switch).</b> The memes were good.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b>10. <i>Amid Evil</i> (PC)</b></span><br />
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The overwhelming success of 2016's <i>Doom</i> reboot signaled a thirst for the sort of retro-style first-person shooter where there's no reloading and the main character moves at the approximate speed of a cheetah. While the mainstream scene has yet to catch on, the indie market offers plenty of options, and some of the same collaborators responsible for last year's joyfully overviolent <i>Dusk </i>delivered again in 2019 with <i>Amid Evil</i>, a medieval (GET IT?) homage to classic magic-themed shooters <i>Heretic </i>and <i>Hexen</i>. Enemy and environmental variety is strong throughout given the range of settings (from gothic to futuristic), and the visuals somehow look old and new at the same time, mixing limited polygon counts and pixelated textures with gorgeous lighting and reflections. (The game is supposedly getting a ray-tracing update soon.) Most importantly, one of the weapons is a staff that flings miniature exploding planets. Play this.<br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">9. <i>Blasphemous</i> (Switch)</span></b><br />
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Although plenty of games have emulated the <i>mechanics </i>of the <i>Souls </i>series - the bonfires, the bloodstains, the stamina meter - a much trickier task is recreating the intrigue, and the slow drip of concrete answers that follows. The Game Kitchen, a developer from Spain, gets off to a good start by pulling imagery from their home country, resulting in a recognizably Western setting that nevertheless doesn't quite slot to grid, and overwhelms you in the misery of Christian self-flagellation, the belief that humanity is inherently unclean. In terms of play, it's a bit closer to classic <i>Castlevania</i>, with the one-on-one duels making for some of the most memorable combat encounters of the year. The platforming is <i>way </i>too harsh, and the developers themselves have acknowledged that they went overboard with the abundance of instant-death spike traps. But then in a game where the major theme is inflicting horrific self-harm, maybe that's appropriate? (<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/blasphemous-review/">Review.</a>)<br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">8. <i>Ape Out</i> (Switch)</span></b><br />
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A case of style-over-substance where, <i>damn</i>, this game sure has a lot of style. Although <i>Ape Out </i>does find amusing ways to switch up its combat scenarios - the power outage sequences, in particular, are wonderful - what you see in the first few minutes of the campaign is essentially what you'll be seeing for the rest of it, playing as a runaway primate who pops his oppressors like water balloons. But it's the game's unique audiovisual flair that makes it - the one-point perspective, the bright colors that turn the carnage into something resembling a Jackson Pollock painting, and the simple fact that all of the sound effects are actually percussive instruments, morphing the mayhem into freestyle jazz. It's possibly the most violent game of the year by simple virtue of what's happening on screen, but it feels more akin to creating beautiful art. I don't know if that's less or <i>more </i>perverse than if the same acts had been depicted realistically, but either way, <i>Ape Out </i>is damn satisfying. (<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/ape-out-review/">Review.</a>)<br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">7. <i>Slay the Spire </i>(Switch)</span></b><br />
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A roguelike that fits comfortably next to <i>Darkest Dungeon </i>and <i>Into the Breach </i>among the best that the genre has to offer, though it's a slightly tougher sell due to the sheer simplicity of its premise. It's a deck-building game with no real story that consists entirely of turn-based battles arranged on a branching path, and it'll be quite a few runs until you get a sense of the game's depth, after you've expanded on the number of cards that can be unlocked mid-game. The three characters are wildly different and increasingly complex - the starting knight hits hard and heals frequently, the rogue focuses on stacking poison damage, and the robot summons little drones that unleash passive effects each turn. It deftly passes the "just one more run" test, and while success takes a lot of planning and more than a little luck, landing on a winning strategy has the sort of energizing effect that makes you want to dance around the room and tell everyone who know who's also playing <i>Slay the Spire </i>how you managed to reach the end.<br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">6. <i>Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice </i>(PC)</span></b><br />
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We FromSoft fans love to be given new challenges. In <i>Bloodborne</i>, they took away our shields, and now in <i>Sekiro</i>, the only path to victory is countering. What used to be a neat little party trick in <i>Dark Souls</i> to separate the masters from the peasants (and I say this as one of said peasants) is now mandatory. This direction sparked a fierce debate about difficulty settings and accessibility, and I can't fault anyone for finding <i>Sekiro</i> unbearably frustrating or even literally unplayable. But speaking as one of Hidetaka Miyazaki's playthings, it hurts so good. The <i>Souls </i>sequels got progressively easier as they offered nothing new to conquer, so it's a pleasure to be forced to <i>learn</i> something, and that process is the closest I'll likely come to feeling like I'm punching through the original <i>Dark Souls </i>for the first time again. I didn't connect with <i>Sekiro</i>'s lore the way I usually do with these games (likely down to personal preference due to a setting that I feel has been done to death), but <i>goddamn</i> is this some of the tightest, most rewarding combat ever conceived. (<a href="http://mikesuskie.blogspot.com/2019/04/sekiro-shadows-die-twice-review-plus.html">Review.</a>)<br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">5. <i>Reventure</i> (Switch)</span></b><br />
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I avoided this for much of the year because I'm a shallow person and screenshots make it look so painfully mundane. It turns out that's the point, because <i>Reventure </i>is all about turning expectations for a generic action-adventure on their heads. Although not a roguelike, it is <i>run-based</i>, the hook being that it sports a hundred endings, and almost every single one pokes fun at a nonsensical gaming convention that we've been trained to take for granted. <i>Reventure </i>is the sort of game that constantly has you asking, "But will <i>this </i>work? Did they think of <i>that</i>?" And the answer is <i>yes</i>, time and time again, a fact afforded by the developers' smart decision to keep the scope limited, lest their vision exceed their reach. The funniest game of the year, and more challenging than it sounds, albeit not in the way you'd think, since the inventory weight system adds a neat little puzzle bent to navigating the world and getting the right tools to the right places. (<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/reventure-switch-review/">Review.</a>)<br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">4. <i>Super Mario Maker 2</i> (Switch)</span></b><br />
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I never played the first <i>Mario Maker</i>, because I just couldn't muster the enthusiasm to spend hours putting together my own levels and then share them with the three or four other Wii U owners. Oddly enough, <i>Mario Maker 2</i>, despite being released on a far more popular console, never really became a social fixture like the original did, but speaking as someone to whom this was all new, I had a blast. Nintendo suckered me in with an actual single-player campaign this time (one that's not only terrific, but showcases all of the crazy things you can do with the creation engine), but the act of pouring countless hours into levels and then actually <i>getting feedback </i>wasn't just rewarding - it was new to me. Hell, I even got a couple of my levels played on a stream, and not only did the guy enjoy them, but one of the commenters even complimented me. While there were better games released this year, <i>Mario Maker 2</i> was perhaps the only one to give me an experience I'd never had before.<br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">3. <i>Pathologic 2</i> (PC)</span></b><br />
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It's lovely that my three favorite games this year all do <i>incredibly </i>interesting things with interactive storytelling. <i>Pathologic 2</i> misses out on a higher ranking by virtue of being a remake (albeit a confusingly titled one), but speaking as someone who'd only dipped his toes in the original, I was steadily gripped by Ice-Pick Lodge's relentlessly bleak take on the survival genre, set over twelve days in which society slowly collapses following the outbreak of a deadly plague. <i>Pathologic 2</i> forgoes the sort of polish that would be demanded of higher-profile titles, immersing you not through production values, but rather reliable systems. The effect is a nonstop sensation of impending doom so overwhelming that to simply hit a dead end, a no-win scenario, almost feels like a canonical ending in and of itself. Miserable from start to finish, yet haunting and profound in ways that cheerier games couldn't be, <i>Pathologic 2</i> may not sound appealing, but it's one of the year's most captivating releases for those brave enough to face it. (<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/pathologic-2-review/">Review.</a>)<br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">2. <i>Death Stranding </i>(PS4)</span></b><br />
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Had any other person's name been attached to <i>Death Stranding</i>, labeling this the bravest AAA game of the year might have been accurate. Surely the "brave" move for someone with as outsized an ego and as reliable a following as Hideo Kojima would be to acknowledge his flaws and limit his scope. Thank god he didn't, or we wouldn't have been blessed with this crazy, overblown experiment in social gaming. Although I can't go into details about why the traditional story elements worked for me (and I seem to be in the minority there), the more important matter is the way Kojima integrates <i>Death Stranding</i>'s themes into its play, in which the process of running long, drawn-out deliveries is made easier by structures left by other players. One of the year's greatest satisfactions was the constant reminder, in the bottom-left corner of the screen, that the paths I'd laid down were used and appreciated by others. These are difficult times, and they're easier to bear together. (<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/death-stranding-second-opinion/">Review.</a>)<br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">1. <i>Disco Elysium</i> (PC)</span></b><br />
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This was a difficult call. <i>Death Stranding </i>was the most important game of the year, the biggest conversation-changer. But I didn't treasure every single moment of it the way I did with <i>Disco Elysium</i>. Two decades ago, <i>Planescape: Torment </i>set a new standard for writing in video games that has still only been matched by a select few, but it didn't quite have the courage to focus entirely on that, with cumbersome combat occasionally getting in the way. Although its unofficial follow-up, <i>Torment: Tides of Numenera</i>, wisely made the combat optional, <i>Disco Elysium </i>(which throws a "special thanks" to the legendary Chris Avellone in the credits) removes it altogether, leaving us with an entirely dialogue-driven RPG that recognizes how strong its writing, characterization and world-building are, and doesn't let anything else stand in the way. Hilarious, poignant, absorbing, and unafraid to preach politics, <i>Disco Elysium </i>has a lot to say, and says it in the best way. (Review is in the pipes!)<br />
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<b>Most overrated: </b><i>Sayonara Wild Hearts</i><br />
<b>Most underrated: </b><i>Rage 2</i><br />
<b>Most overlooked: </b><i>The Stillness of the Wind</i><br />
<b>Most visually striking: </b><i>Control</i><br />
<b>All-out best-looking game: </b><i>Death Stranding</i><br />
<b>Best story: </b><i>Pathologic 2</i><br />
<b>Best writing: </b><i>Disco Elysium</i><br />
<b>Best character: </b>Kim Kitsuragi (<i>Disco Elysium</i>)<br />
<b>Best performance: </b>Norman Reedus (<i>Death Stranding</i>)<br />
<b>Funniest game: </b><i>Reventure</i><br />
<b>Best original soundtrack:</b><i><b> </b>Outer Wilds</i><br />
<b>Best licensed soundtrack: </b><i>Death Stranding</i><br />
<b>Biggest surprise: </b><i>Tetris 99</i><br />
<b>Biggest disappointment: </b><i>Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order</i><br />
<b>Comeback of the year: </b><i>Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair</i><br />
<b>Best multiplayer game: </b><i>Apex Legends</i><br />
<b>Most enjoyable bad game: </b><i>Shenmue III</i><br />
<b>Least enjoyable good game: </b><i>Outer Wilds</i><br />
<b>Best free game: </b><i>Apex Legends</i><br />
<b>Game that I spent the most time with: </b><i>Death Stranding</i><br />
<b>Game that I spent the least time with before dismissing: </b><i>Dawn of Survivors</i><br />
<b>Game that I most wanted to play, but didn't: </b><i>Devotion</i><br />
<b>Game I literally own that I most wanted to play, but still haven't: </b><i>John Wick Hex</i><br />
<b>Best game that I still haven't finished: </b><i>Astral Chain</i><br />
<b>All-out worst game that I played: </b><i>Where the Bees Make Honey</i><br />
<b>Best non-2019 game that I first played in 2019: </b><i>Frostpunk</i><br />
<b>Best remake/re-release:</b><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> </b><i>Resident Evil 2</i></span><br />
<b>Most anticipated game this coming year: </b><i>Half-Life: Alyx</i><br />
<i><br /></i>Susquatchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04067561426934895146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3222696689475171071.post-32350407905036591082019-10-08T10:08:00.000-07:002019-10-09T20:52:09.478-07:00How Joker's best scene renders the rest of the movie pointless [SPOILERS]<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Hi! I didn't like <i>Joker </i>very much. And while I was initially content not to extend my takes beyond <a href="https://twitter.com/MikeSuskie/status/1180340337316913153">this brief tweet</a> lest I contribute to The Discourse, I must confess that the movie has remained in my mind for the last couple of days. Not for the reasons I'm sure director Todd Phillips <i>wants </i>it to be, granted, but rather because it's such a fascinating failure, a <a href="https://www.thewrap.com/joker-director-todd-phillips-rebuffs-criticism-of-dark-tone-we-didnt-make-the-movie-to-push-buttons-exclusive/">quote-unquote "real movie snuck into the studio system under the guise of a comic book film"</a> that ends up feeling considerably more shallow and less sure of itself than at least the recent upper tier of the genre it tries so hard to stand above. Maybe it's just because the only film to attempt something similar is <i>Logan</i>, and that one was, y'know, good?<br />
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But as much as I'd love to rail on Phillips for being a smug, insufferable toolbox <i>on top</i> of being a mediocre director, let's just focus on the "mediocre director" part. See, I <i>do</i> happen to think that there's one genuinely magnificent scene in <i>Joker</i>, and while it's a perfect microcosm of what Phillips is <i>trying</i> to do, the success of this scene only underlines how the film as a whole fails to justify its existence. This involves getting into specifics, but you're all adults and you saw the spoiler warning in the header, so let's get into this.<br />
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Arthur has just been (rightly) fired from his job at a rent-a-clown agency for bringing a loaded gun into a children's hospital. He's taking the subway home late at night, still in his outfit and makeup, when a couple of Wall Street douchebags on the train start pulling the "give us a smile" routine on a woman who clearly wants to be left alone. Suddenly, Arthur begins launching into one of his uncontrollable laughing frenzies, and the men turn their attention to him, because they think he's laughing at <i>them</i>, and if there's one thing that rich, white, smug, insecure bullies hate, it's <a href="https://youtu.be/HHckZCxdRkA">being laughed at</a>.<br />
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So they attack him. And eventually Arthur decides to use that gun that just lost him his job. The scene isn't shocking because of the violence; I've seen guys get shot in movies before. It's for how <i>suddenly</i> the tables turn. One moment, this asshole is stomping on a helpless Arthur. Only a couple of frames later, his brains are all over the window.<br />
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In that moment, we think we're seeing the beginning of a familiar character arc: Our lead is introduced to violence through necessity, but as they grows more comfortable with it, their acts become increasingly less justified. The obvious comparison is <i>Taxi Driver</i>, while the "I can't believe you actually remember <i>The Brave One</i>" comparison is the 2007 Jodie Foster vehicle <i>The Brave One</i>. Arthur Fleck is on a sled, and he's just been given his first push, and he's only going to pick up speed as the slope steepens.<br />
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But then the scene takes an unexpected turn. Two of Arthur's assailants are dead, while the third is whimpering and stumbling away with a bullet in his leg. Arthur has emerged victorious. But instead of letting it go, he chases the final attacker off the train and executes him in cold blood on the subway platform with a distinct look of satisfaction on his face. And there it is. There's no slow boil, no gradual escalation. Arthur gets his first taste of the upper hand and he loves it.<br />
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If Phillips wanted to make a standalone examination of the Joker's psyche, this five-minute stretch of the film would have made a terrific short, because the character completes his entire arc within this single scene. At the start, he's at the lowest moment of his life, a figurative and literal clown who's been punched constantly and never punched back. By the end, he emerges a murderous vigilante. As a different interpretation of this character once said, all it takes is a little push.<br />
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The problem is that this scene occurs before the film's halfway point, and now that Phillips has told us everything we need to know about his Joker, there's nowhere else for him to go. From that moment forward, <i>Joker</i> becomes predictable. Once we know that Arthur has no remorse about killing, everyone who wrongs him is marked for death. When Arthur pockets a pair of scissors before meeting with the coworker who ratted him out, there's zero question that the scissors are gonna end up in that guy's skull. When Arthur fantasizes about shooting himself on the talk show, we know for certain that he will instead turn the gun on the host who invited him on just to mock him.<br />
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Even if <i>Joker</i>'s story beats all play out exactly as I'd anticipated, I could still give the movie a passing grade if it had a <i>point</i>, but Phillips is too cowardly a filmmaker to take a stand on anything. He makes his main character an unambiguous villain, but ensures that said villain's only victims are people who "deserve" it. He notes the unfair stigma of the mentally ill, but paints them exclusively as murderers and domestic abusers. He portrays a society cheated by the 1%, but depicts the remaining 99% as a bloodthirsty mob spurred on by one random homicide. He brings up countless political issues but then just has the Joker proclaim that he "doesn't believe in anything."<br />
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Maybe <i>Joker</i>'s muddy politics are the point. After all, some of the best portrayals of this character have dismissed the idea of his lust for chaos being some sort of quantifiable force. He's evil incarnate, and the fact that there's often so little motivation for his behavior is what makes him so scary (and such a fitting nemesis to Batman). But if the only explanation is that there <i>is</i> no explanation, why make a two-hour movie? What is the <i>point</i> of any of this?<br />
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I think it's pretty simple, honestly - a hack director, previously most famous for having Ken Jeong leap out of a trunk naked, got the idea that he'd become "respectable" if he'd just surround himself with a talented cast and crew and mix-and-match the plot threads from a couple of Scorsese movies. And given that it won the grand prize at the Venice International Film Festival - an honor previously awarded to <i>Roma </i>and <i>The Shape of Water</i> - his approach clearly seems to have worked for some people. But I walked away feeling like I'd just seen a very pretty, very well-acted waste of time.<br />
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Maybe a film that causes this much ruckus for this little reason is as fitting a tribute to the Joker as there could be. But that doesn't make it good.Susquatchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04067561426934895146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3222696689475171071.post-46769063314212045442019-04-07T03:26:00.000-07:002019-04-07T03:26:42.371-07:00Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice review, plus some trendy discussion on difficulty<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>Sekiro </i>released two weeks ago, and it has since consumed every second of my life that wasn't spent doing things that <i>must</i> be done as a person who is alive and intends to continue being alive. I get like this with FromSoft games. Initially, it's to beat the spoilers, to be among the first to <i>discover</i> the new world that this developer has laid out. Then it's to master everything. A FromSoft game, for me, isn't finished when the credits have rolled. It's finished when there are no challenges left to conquer. With nearly a hundred hours logged and every achievement unlocked, as of today, that's finally happened.<br />
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I say this for two reasons. The first is to underline that <i>Sekiro</i> is pretty much everything I want and expect out of a FromSoft game. The second is so nobody can throw variants of the old "git gud" argument at me when I say that I think every <i>Souls</i> game should ship with an easy mode.<br />
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The thing about <i>Sekiro </i>is that it's tough even by the standards of a company known for this sort of thing. <i>Dark Souls</i>, for better or worse, is universally recognized as the poster boy of hardcore challenge, yet FromSoft seems to have invested its time since in demonstrating just how good we had it back then, by stripping away failsafe options we once took for granted. <i>Bloodborne </i>took away our shields, and now in <i>Sekiro</i>, it's counters only, plus you can't summon, and dying gives every other character in the game the goddamn plague.<br />
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And look, I love it. Going from loathing the original <i>Dark Souls </i>to including it within my top three favorite games of all time is the sort of learning curve and reward you just don't get from any other developer. But when I imagine a game like <i>Sekiro</i> including an easy mode, the effects are only positive. It means more people get to love a thing that I love, because they can enjoy it on their own terms. It means that those who physically can't play <i>Sekiro</i> as-is -- because they're disabled or else just lack the motor reflex skills -- won't be walled off.<br />
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I understand some of the arguments to the contrary. This isn't generally a discussion we have with other mediums, and in fact, broadening the appeal of, say, a <i>movie</i> is generally frowned upon. Whenever a studio mandates that a film's content be toned down to secure a PG-13 rating, it's rightly viewed as the compromising of an artistic vision. And if the question was whether FromSoft should lighten the load for <i>everyone</i>, I'd object. These are obviously games designed for a specific type of player, and at some point we need to acknowledge that not everything is for everybody. I get that.<br />
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But let's say, for a moment, that <i>Sekiro</i> shipped with an optional assisted mode, given that such an choice hasn't stopped, say, the <i>Bayonetta</i> games from being regarded as hardcore character action magnum opuses. Let's also say that it wouldn't be possible to switch difficulties mid-game, putting to rest the popular argument that players overwhelmed with frustration would be tempted to bump it down in the heat of the moment rather than soldiering through. I still get the experience I want, and more people get the experience that <i>they</i> want.<br />
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To say that's not a good thing reeks of gatekeeping to me, especially now that so much of this discussion is being rightly framed as an accessibility issue. Not a lot of people argue that subtitles, colorblind modes, or rebindable controls compromise a developer's vision. No reason <i>this</i> should, either. And besides, I have a strange hunch that the same people panicking over the prospect of FromSoft losing its artistic license also boycotted <i>Battlefield V </i>for featuring a female lead, so I'll continue to point the finger at rush of being part of an exclusive "club" as the driving issue here.<br />
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Of course, the reason this argument has sprung up is because <i>Sekiro</i> is far and away the most difficult game FromSoft has ever released, enough so that even a number of longtime <i>Souls</i> fans seem to have been turned off by it. Even as someone who loves the game, I'll admit that it goes a bit too far in places. The final boss in particular is a four-phase marathon against a guy with a <i>goddamn submachine gun </i>where the most effective strategy is to just spend most of the fight running away and luring him into using a jump attack that leaves him vulnerable for a few quick strikes from behind. For as replayable as FromSoft's titles are, they have yet to make a game where I'm not dreading at least one segment upon revisit, whether it's the Bed of Chaos, Yahar'gul or (the newest entry) Snake Eyes Shirahagi.<br />
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For the most part, though, <i>Sekiro</i> worked like a charm on me, precisely <i>because </i>its relentless difficulty forces me to master new tricks. Countering is something I rarely bothered with in previous <i>Souls </i>games -- it was always just a showy move where the risks outweighed the rewards -- but here, it's mandatory.<br />
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See, while <i>Sekiro </i>is still very recognizably a <i>Souls</i> game on a number of levels -- from the way its world is laid out to the familiar mechanics it transplants from Hidetaka Miyazaki's past work -- the combat has received a massive overhaul to the point that even FromSoft vets will run smack into a wall for the opening hours. Stamina has long been the backbone of <i>Souls </i>combat, but here, it's called "poise" and it <i>only </i>applies to blocking, meaning that both you and your enemies can attack endlessly. So remaining on the defensive until your enemies inevitably need to recharge is no longer an option. They'll wail on you without relent until your guard is broken.<br />
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That's where countering comes in. It's a simple act of hitting the block button right when an attack lands, and doing so successfully will drain the enemy's poise rather than yours. <i>Simply </i>standing there, holding the block button and absorbing hits, will eventually break your guard and leave you vulnerable. Instead, the way to win is to redirect that poise damage back at your assailant. Breaking an enemy's guard opens them up to a finisher. It's possible to kill any enemy in the game -- including bosses -- without entirely draining its health meter. While it's a tricky system to learn (as it involves memorizing attack patterns to the point that you can successfully deflect long combos), nailing it is one of the most empowering experiences in any video game I've ever played. It feels absolutely incredible.<br />
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I mentioned that FromSoft has been slowly stripping away our options in combat, and it's evidenced in <i>Sekiro</i>'s total lack of character builds. Not only are we playing as a named protagonist this time (with spoken dialog and everything!), but we only have one primary weapon and no real leeway over our attributes. Grinding isn't even really a thing anymore, since the means to improve both our attack power and defense come in the form of finite resources. You can slightly customize your play style with a skill tree and a set of limited-use attachments for your robot arm -- oh yeah, your character has a robot arm, by the way -- but for the most part, there's only one way to fight.<br />
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Where <i>Sekiro</i> opens up, and where it continues to diverge from its <i>Souls </i>brethren, is in the way players move about levels, and the number of options they have in approaching tough situations. The main character is a shinobi, and as such, you're given the option to jump, hang, wall-run, and otherwise just navigate levels in a more three-dimensional sense than we're used to in Miyazaki's games. There's even an <i>Arkham Asylum</i>-esque grappling hook that you can use to quickly sling yourself from various points around the impressively open levels.<br />
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The result is the introduction of stealth into a series that previously barely featured it. <i>Sekiro </i>was originally intended to be a <i>Tenchu </i>game. I've never played one of those, so I can't speak to the similarities, but I'm led to believe that there are clear parallels in the ways you can sidestep traditional combat by one-shotting wandering enemies from the shadows.<br />
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It's an important balance for a game as frequently rage-inducing as <i>Sekiro</i> often is, where the big climactic boss encounters funnel you into a very specific method of play. I don't think a game as brutal as <i>Sekiro </i>would survive as a straight-up boss rush, where we spend hours making dents in a seemingly insurmountable foe only to start the process all over again immediately for the next battle, but it's the moments of exploration and wonder that keep the <i>Souls</i> games from becoming exhausting, and <i>Sekiro</i>'s stealth-centric main levels compensate for the increased challenge of its title fights.<br />
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Speaking of which, how does <i>Sekiro</i> stand up to the other <i>Souls </i>games from a world-building perspective? Well, it's a bit of a mixed bag for me, though much of it comes down to preference. FromSoft's usual style of indirect storytelling is in full force, rewarding players who read between the lines and giving important contexts to areas that would be throwaway transitional levels in a game by any other developer.<br />
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On the other hand, <i>Sekiro</i>'s feudal Japan setting is <i>extremely</i> genre, and it's a genre that I just don't find as inherently fascinating as the entropic fantasy of <i>Dark Souls </i>and the Lovecraftian horror of <i>Bloodborne</i>. Again, it's all just personal taste, but the warring clans and blood of dragons feel like well-tread territory among Japanese games, and so many characters in this game speak in the same solemn grumble that I found myself wishing the subtitles would label the speaker. The opening hours of the game also have the <i>Nioh</i> problem of repetitive, indistinguishable environments (pagodas for days), though <i>Sekiro</i>'s second half is a massive improvement in this regard, with the gorgeous vistas of Mount Kongo and the Sunken Valley providing some memorably colorful sights.<br />
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But my general indifference to <i>Sekiro</i>'s lore is pretty much the only reason I don't quite regard this game with the same awe that I reserve for masterpieces like <i>Dark Souls </i>and <i>Bloodborne</i>, because not only is it at least as tight and satisfying as those games, but with a revised combat system and a <i>Tenchu</i>-esque focus on stealth, it carves out a unique identity for itself even as it shares many recognizable qualities of Miyazaki's previous work. But having said all of that, know that this debate over accessibility hasn't sprung up for no reason. <i>Sekiro </i>wasn't my breaking point, but it left me wondering what <i>will</i> be.Susquatchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04067561426934895146noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3222696689475171071.post-75915303949521880482019-02-23T14:50:00.002-08:002019-03-30T15:18:40.358-07:00I've never cared less about the Oscars than this year, but here are my predictions anyway<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: inherit;"><strike><b>Best Picture: </b><i>Roma</i></strike></span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d; font-family: inherit;"><b>Best Director:</b> <span style="background-color: white;">Alfonso Cuarón (<i>Roma</i>)</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d; font-family: inherit;"><b>Best Actor:</b> Rami Malek (<i>Bohemian Rhapsody</i>)</span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><strike><b>Best Actress:</b> Glenn Close (<i>The Wife</i>)</strike></span><br />
<b style="color: #38761d;">Best Supporting Actor: </b><span style="color: #38761d;">Mahershala Ali (</span><i style="color: #38761d;">Green Book</i><span style="color: #38761d;">)</span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Best Supporting Actress:</b> Regina King (<i>If Beale Street Could Talk</i>)</span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><strike><b>Best Original Screenplay:</b> <i>The Favourite</i></strike></span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Best Adapted Screenplay:</b> <i>BlacKkKlansman</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Best Animated Feature: </b><i>Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><strike><b>Best Documentary Feature: </b><i>RBG</i></strike></span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Best Foreign Language Film: </b><i>Roma</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Best Cinematography: </b><i>Roma</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Best Costume Design: </b><i>Black Panther</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Best Documentary Short Subject: </b><i>Period. End of Sentence.</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><strike><b>Best Film Editing: </b><i>Vice</i></strike></span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Best Makeup and Hairstyling: </b><i>Vice</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><strike><b>Best Original Score: </b><i>If Beale Street Could Talk</i></strike></span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Best Original Song: </b>"Shallow" (<i>A Star Is Born</i>)</span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><strike><b>Best Production Design: </b><i>The Favourite</i></strike></span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Best Animated Short Film: </b><i>Bao</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><strike><b>Best Live-Action Short Film: </b><i>Marguerite</i></strike></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><strike><b>Best Sound Editing: </b><i>First Man</i></strike></span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Best Sound Mixing: </b><i>Bohemian Rhapsody</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><strike><b>Best Visual Effects: </b><i>Avengers: Infinity War</i></strike></span><br />
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<b>14/24</b><br />
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<a href="http://mikesuskie.blogspot.com/2018/03/oscar-predictions-get-some.html">My predictions last year.</a>Susquatchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04067561426934895146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3222696689475171071.post-34992425855800519362019-01-30T03:07:00.000-08:002019-02-12T00:58:51.368-08:00The Resident Evil 2 remake is great, but it flubs the two-character mechanic<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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So that <i>Resident Evil 2</i> remake is damn good stuff, huh? Maybe that would come as a bit more of a surprise if <i>RE7</i> hadn't demonstrated that, after generations of experimentation, Capcom finally remembers what made this series great to begin with. Nevertheless, the updated <i>RE2 </i>is a near-perfect cross-section of old and new. It's fluid, precise and gorgeous, but also confidently boasts the small scale that <i>Resident Evil </i>abandoned after this very entry. Most of the game is set in and around one (very iconic) building, and the claustrophobia is real - the more we try to claw our way out, the deeper into hell we fall.<br />
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The remake of <i>RE1</i> famously consisted of roughly 70% new content, and while that doesn't quite seem to be the case with the new <i>RE2 </i>- the layout is mostly identical, and all of the major plot beats still happen in the same order - Capcom has rearranged enough of the familiar material that even those who have played through the original numerous times, as I have, will be on edge. I trust at this point that I don't need to explain why <i>RE2</i> is a classic, nor do I need to detail how the remake preserves its legacy - the rest of the internet has you covered at the moment. Instead, I want to focus on one small but crucial way that the new <i>RE2</i> misses its potential.</div>
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The original <i>RE2</i> featured what was rather eye-rollingly referred to as the "zapping" system, wherein the campaign's full story was gleaned through two back-to-back playthroughs. You could choose to play as either Leon or Claire, and each would offer a slightly different perspective on the same general events. When you finished the game with one character, you had the option to start "Scenario B," a slightly abbreviated version of the same campaign depicting what the <i>other </i>protagonist was doing during all of this. Although Scenario B had you repeating many of the same puzzles and encounters, there were enough new beats to keep things relatively fresh, and the shared continuity between the two playthroughs manifested in surprising ways - say, if Leon doesn't pick up the machine gun, it'll still be around for Claire to retrieve.<br />
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On the surface, the remake offers the same feature - Claire and Leon are both playable, and you'll still need to complete what's now called a "2nd Run" in order to see the entirety of the story. Each campaign has a unique subplot, and the revisit is considerably shorter, mainly since getting out of the police station is a much simpler affair the second time. But the replay still felt a bit more arduous to me than it ever did in the original, and there are a couple of reasons for that.</div>
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Firstly, to be fair, the zapping system was just an inherently strongly sell to me when there were fewer games to play. There are games from my childhood that I haven't touched for 15 or 20 years that I still remember more vividly than stuff I played months ago. With more time, less money, and a smaller overall market, we had to get the most out of what we owned in the days of the original <i>RE2</i>. So part of my indifference to the remake's 2nd Run system is a bias in how I consume games now versus two decades ago. I'm not looking for excuses to replay games. If anything, I'm looking for excuses to put them down.</div>
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But I can't fault <i>RE2</i> for giving committed players a bit of extra value. Even without the double campaign, we still get multiple difficulties, letter grading, an in-game achievement system used to unlock costumes and bonus weapons, and some additional modes in which you use limited resources to escape the station as either the last surviving soldier or <a href="https://twitter.com/MikeSuskie/status/1090534358853783554">a block of tofu</a>. There's a <i>lot</i> here, enough to keep diehards occupied for ages while still sticking to what should have been a lean base game.<br />
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I imagine Capcom feared that a lot of modern gamers are like me, content to play through a game once and shelve it for good after the credits have rolled. That's probably why, this time, they've refused to tuck some of the game's best material into a return visit that many newbies likely won't be aware of.<br />
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The idea of Leon's and Claire's stories syncing up was never going to be airtight. Realistically, in Scenario B, all of the doors would be unlocked, all of the puzzles would be solved, and most of the enemies would be the permanent kind of dead. (Not <i>all</i> of them, of course - in the original <i>RE2</i>, you literally didn't have the means to kill every single enemy in the game.) So you already have to suspend your disbelief a bit.<br />
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But in the remake, Capcom seems to have altogether abandoned the idea of these two stories even unfolding in the same timeline. Every major threat that the first protagonist deals with returns for round two. Entire rooms get demolished only to be meticulously pieced back together in time for the second character's arrival. Leon and Claire almost never run into each other, despite following almost identical routes and often witnessing the same events from the same angles.<br />
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So what are the differences? Well, as with last time, each of them has a midpoint tangent involving a supporting character - Leon teams up with Ada and we get some setup for the broader lore, while Claire helps a girl named Sherry whose parents shed some light on how this disaster happened. That's the bulk of it. They also have unique sets of weapons, and each has a different final boss. That's about it. Disregarding obvious differences in dialog, the two campaigns are at least 90% identical.<br />
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Originally, the biggest incentive for playing through Scenario B came with a name: Mr. X. While Nemesis often gets credit as the progenitor for "stalker" enemies in horror games - nigh-unkillable menaces that routinely hunt the player, an idea perfected with the xenomorph in <i>Alien: Isolation</i> - Mr. X actually arrived one game earlier, hidden away as an extra goodie for anyone who braved Scenario B. Having just completed the game, you think you've got the pattern of things, and then every so often, the towering Tyrant smashes onto the scene and turns whatever you were doing into tense chase sequence. It was a genius way of making a familiar environment foreboding again.<br />
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Mr. X is currently the talk of the gaming community, and rightly so, as his upgrade in the <i>RE2</i> remake is spectacular. In their original incarnations, encounters with Mr. X and Nemesis were heavily scripted affairs. You were meant to feel like you were constantly being hunted when the games were very much in control of when that happened. In the remake, the restraints are off, and Mr. X is a persistent threat. Once he enters the picture, he systematically and unrelentingly wanders the station looking for you. You can hear his lumbering footsteps even when he's in another room. And he can hear <i>you</i>, and will make a beeline for your last known location whenever he does. Since he can't be killed, the only response to seeing him is to turn around and run the other way.<br />
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It's sustained horror, made all the creepier by his stiff expression, <i>interesting</i> choice of headwear, and complete lack of a voice. He's pure, unavoidable <i>death</i> in a leather coat. He's good. He's <i>really</i> good. He's so good, in fact, that Capcom didn't have the stones to save him for the second playthrough this time.<br />
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And that leaves the 2nd Run disappointingly bereft of surprises, which is irritating, because the game still ends in such a way where there are <i>clearly </i>pieces missing. If you play through the game with Leon, he achieves what he largely sets out to do. But how come we barely heard from Claire this whole time? Who's this little girl she's shuttling about? Where's that one major villain that we never officially dealt with? And weren't there parts of the station that we never found the key for?<br />
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Those questions get answered, but only by chugging through a <i>lot</i> of the same material with only the slightest variations. This would have been a perfect time to introduce Mr. X. We spent the first playthrough fearing what was around every corner - even if we'd already played the original, because Capcom wisely shuffled the most memorable scares around. Once we know the layout, <i>RE2</i> could have put our knowledge to the test with an unkillable enemy that can only be outmaneuvered by knowing detours. We <i>kinda</i> get that when Mr. X arrives in the first campaign, but by then, we've already almost finished our business in the station, and the game's best feature gets less than an hour in the spotlight.<br />
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I love the <i>RE2</i> remake. It'll likely be one of my favorite games of the year, and anyone with even the slightest interest in <i>Resident Evil </i>or survival horror in general owes it to themselves to check it out. But whereas the remake of <i>RE1</i> was better on every conceivable, leaving no reason to ever return to the vanilla game in given a choice between the two, <i>RE2</i> actually does lose a couple of minor things in the conversion. Mainly the intricacy of the two-character mechanic, but also that fourth wall-breaking scare where you get attacked during a load animation.</div>
Susquatchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04067561426934895146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3222696689475171071.post-73174011658746439412019-01-11T18:27:00.001-08:002019-01-11T18:27:06.863-08:00Every 2018 release I played, ranked (and there were 100 of them!)<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I've already posted my ten favorite games of the year on both <a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/mike-suskies-top-ten-of-2018/">GameCritics</a> and <a href="http://mikesuskie.blogspot.com/2019/01/this-is-just-my-top-ten-of-2018-is-what.html">my blog</a> (both articles are identical, so I don't care which one you click on), but here I've compiled a list of every 2018 release that I played, ranked from worst to best. I played a hundred new games this year, which is probably a new record for me, and one that likely won't be topped unless I break my spine again this year.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">* games I'm still working on</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">^ games I've shelved but may come back to</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="background-color: white;">° games I gave up on</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">100: <i>Immortal: Unchained</i> (PS4)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>99. <i>Fallout
76</i> (PS4)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>98. <i>Extinction</i> (PS4)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>97. <i>Castle
of Heart</i> (Switch)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>96. <i>Shadow
of the Tomb Raider</i> (PS4)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>95. <i>Metal
Gear Survive</i> (PS4)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>94. <i>Underworld:
Ascendant</i> (PC)<span style="background: white;"><o:p></o:p>°</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">93. <i>Agony (</i>PC)*<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>92.<i> Lust
for Darkness </i>(PC)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">91. <i>Detroit: Become Human</i> (PS4)^<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>90. <i>Seeking
Dawn</i> (Vive)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>89. <i>H1Z1:
Battle Royale</i> (PS4)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>88. <i>Secret
of Mana</i> (PS4)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>87. <i>Ash
of Gods: Redemption</i> (PC)<span style="background: white;">°</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">86. <i>Rifter </i>(PC)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>85. <i>Outbreak:
The Nightmare Chronicles</i> (PC)<span style="background: white;"><o:p></o:p>°</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">84. <i>Ambition of the Slimes</i> (PC)<span style="background: white;"><o:p></o:p>°</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">83. <i>Omen of Sorrow</i> (PS4)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>82. <i>The
Perfect Sniper</i> (Vive)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>81. <i>Darksiders
III</i> (PS4)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>80. <i>BombTag</i> (PC)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>79. <i>The
Flood</i> (PC)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>78. <i>Tesseract
VR</i> (Vive)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>77. <i>Guacamelee!
2</i> (PS4)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>76. <i>Just
Cause 4</i> (PS4)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>75. <i>Robo
Boop</i> (Vive)<span style="background: white;"><o:p></o:p>°</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">74. <i>Ashen</i> (PC)<span style="background: white;"><o:p></o:p>°</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">73. <i>All Walls Must Fall </i>(PC)^<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>72. <i>Call
of Cthulh</i>u (PS4)<span style="background: white;"><o:p></o:p>°</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">71.<i> Jet Island</i> (Vive)<span style="background: white;"><o:p></o:p>°</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">70. <i>Infernium </i>(PC)<span style="background: white;"><o:p></o:p>°</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">69. <i>Iconoclasts</i> (Switch)<span style="background: white;"><o:p></o:p>°</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background: white;">68. <i>Pokémon
Quest </i>(Switch)<o:p></o:p>°</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">67. <i>Dawn of the Breakers </i>(Switch)^<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>66. <i>QuiVR</i> (Vive)^<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>65. <i>Laser
League</i> (PC)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>64. <i>Cold
Iron</i> (Vive)<span style="background: white;"><o:p></o:p>°</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">63. <i>Shadow of the Colossus</i> (PS4)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>62. <i>Warhammer:
Vermintide 2 </i>(PC)<span style="background: white;"><o:p></o:p>°</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">61. <i>Overload</i> (PC)<span style="background: white;"><o:p></o:p>°</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">60. <i>Conjuror’s Eye </i>(Vive)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>59. <i>La
Camila</i> (Vive)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>58. <i>Earth
Wars</i> (Switch)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>57.<i> Kirby
Star Allies </i>(Switch)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>56. <i>Roguemance</i> (PC)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>55.<i> Bloodstained:
Curse of the Moon </i>(PC)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>54. <i>The
Messenger</i> (Switch)<span style="background: white;"><o:p></o:p>°</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">53. <i>Donut County </i>(Switch)*<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">52.<i> Sacred Four</i> (Vive)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>51. <i>Sinner:
Sacrifice for Redemption</i> (PS4)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>50. <i>Vampyr</i> (PC)^<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>49. <i>Squidlit</i> (PC)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>48. <i>Marie’s
Room</i> (PC)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>47. <i>Dead
Cells</i> (Switch)<span style="background: white;">^</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">46. <i>Sairento VR</i> (Vive)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>45.<i> Ni
no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom </i>(PC)<span style="background: white;"><o:p></o:p>°</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">44. <i>Zone of the Enders: The
2nd Runner – MARS</i> (Vive)<span style="background: white;"><o:p></o:p>°</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">43. <i>Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey</i> (PS4)*<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>42. <i>State
of Mind</i> (PC)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background: white;"><o:p></o:p>41. <i>Pokémon
Let’s Go Pikachu/Eevee </i>(Switch)*</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">40.<i> The Missing: J.J. Macfield
and the Island of Memories</i> (Switch)*<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>39.<i> Picross
S2</i> (Switch)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>38.<i> Downward
Spiral: Horus Station </i>(Vive)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>37. <i>Attack
on Titan 2</i> (Switch)^<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>36. <i>Pixel
Ripped 1989</i> (Vive)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>35. <i>God
of War</i> (PS4)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>34. <i>Candleman:
The Complete Journey</i> (PC)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>33. <i>Youropa</i> (PC)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>32. <i>Subnautica</i> (Vive)*<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>31. <i>Moss</i> (Vive)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>30. <i>Shenmue
I & II </i>(PC)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>29. <i>Dusk</i> (PC)*<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>28. <i>Paratopic</i> (PC)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>27. <i>Black
Bird</i> (Switch)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>26. <i>Super
Smash Bros. Ultimate </i>(Switch)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>25. <i>Ghost
of a Tale </i>(PC)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>24. <i>Hellblade:
Senua’s Sacrifice VR Edition</i> (Vive)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>23. <i>Dandara </i>(Switch)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>22. <i>The
Council </i>(PC)*<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>21. <i>The
Gardens Between </i>(Switch)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>20. <i>Minit </i>(PS4)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>19. <i>Fist
of the North Star: Lost Paradise </i>(PS4)*<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>18.<i> Project
Warlock</i> (PC)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>17. <i>Return
of the Obra Dinn</i> (PC)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>16. <i>Octopath
Traveler</i> (Switch)*<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>15. <i>Death’s
Gambit</i> (PC)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>14. <i>Gwent:
The Witcher Card Game </i>(PC)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>13. <i>Lumines
Remastered </i>(Switch)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>12. <i>Thronebreaker:
The Witcher Tales </i>(PC)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>11. <i>Dark
Souls: Remastered</i> (PC/Switch)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>10. <i>Tetris
Effect </i>(PS4)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>9. <i>Monster
Hunter World</i> (PS4)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>8. <i>Gris </i>(Switch)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>7. <i>Spider-Man</i> (PS4)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>6. <i>Firewall:
Zero Hour</i> (PSVR)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>5. <i>Far:
Lone Sails</i> (PC)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>4. <i>Yoku’s
Island Express</i> (Switch)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>3. <i>Red
Dead Redemption 2 </i>(PS4)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p>2. <i>Into
the Breach</i> (PC/Switch)</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">1. </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Astro Bot: Rescue Mission</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> (PSVR)</span></div>
</div>
<o:p></o:p>Susquatchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04067561426934895146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3222696689475171071.post-21206298264293402092019-01-07T22:05:00.001-08:002019-01-07T22:05:57.945-08:00This is just my top ten of 2018 is what this is<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://i.imgur.com/Wc4Bn6S.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="570" src="https://i.imgur.com/Wc4Bn6S.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Let 2018 forever be remembered as the year in which I was
bed-ridden for several months due to a back injury and still couldn’t work up
the energy to finish <i>Assassin’s Creed:
Odyssey</i>. Indeed, 2018 was a year so full of misfires that I can’t even
confidently state that <i>Metal Gear Survive
</i>was one of the five worst games I played.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">But enough about that. These are bad times, and it’s as
vital as ever that we celebrate the escapism most successful in giving us much-needed
respite from the horrors of the real world. I’ll get to my ten favorite games
of the year in a moment, but first, a few honorable mentions:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;">•</span><b><i> Beat Saber </i>(Vive). </b>Unquestionably
one of the best things I played in 2018. Sadly, it’s still in Early Access, and
thus ineligible. Maybe next year.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;">• </span><b><i>Death’s Gambit </i>(PC). </b>I still say
that this is the best <i>Dark Souls </i>clone
out there. Surprised that more of the industry didn’t agree with me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;">•</span><b><i> Project Warlock </i>(PC). </b>Retro-style
FPSs had a strong year, and this one gets to represent the pack for actually
getting a full release. And yeah, <i>Dusk </i>is
good, too.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;">•</span><b><i> Return of the Obra Dinn </i>(PC). </b>A
terrific game that I’m too stupid to appreciate. I had to look up about 75% of
the answers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;">•</span><b><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"> Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales </span></i><span style="line-height: 115%;">(PC). </span></b><span style="line-height: 115%;">The one game that I’m gutted to omit from my top ten. <i>Witcher 3</i>-quality writing and
characterization, though you gotta like Gwent.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b>10. <i>Tetris Effect </i>(PS4)</b></span><br />
<br />
Look, I don't actually believe that <i>Tetris Effect</i>'s much-hyped PSVR support makes or breaks the experience. Maybe it's because I'd already begun replaying the campaign on Expert by the time I'd bought my headset, and was thus more focused on the falling blocks than on audiovisual splendor I'd already experienced. And yeah, at the end of the day, this is just a game we've all played a billion times before, gussied up with swirling colors and cheesy songs about how <i>we're all connected, man</i>. But given that I've often claimed that <i>Tetris </i>is perhaps the only perfect video game, maybe this is genuinely the only way to improve upon it. <i>Tetris</i> is immortal, and if nothing else, I appreciate that Tetsuya Mizuguchi (combining the particle-heavy visuals of <i>Rez Infinite</i>'s Area X with the dynamically synchronizing scoring of <i>Lumines</i>) has given us an excuse to rediscover that.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://i.imgur.com/bWmMwtU.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="570" src="https://i.imgur.com/bWmMwtU.jpg" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">9. </b><i style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: bold;">Monster Hunter World </i><b style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">(PS4)</b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent;">Despite being the entry that finally broke through in the West (and
would go on to become Capcom’s best-selling game ever), </span><i style="background-color: transparent;">Monster Hunter World</i><span style="background-color: transparent;"> wasn’t exactly the revolution some of us were
expecting, and I know plenty of people who gave this title a shot and </span><i style="background-color: transparent;">still</i><span style="background-color: transparent;"> find the series impenetrable. But
even if it’s not the massive leap forward that I was anticipating, its many
small (but crucial) quality-of-life enhancements make it that much easier to
settle into a groove for dozens – possibly even hundreds – of hours. It’s by far
the best-looking </span><i style="background-color: transparent;">Monster Hunter </i><span style="background-color: transparent;">to
date and offers its most integrated multiplayer experience yet, even if the
online functionality still needs some serious work. We’re at the point now
where whenever a new </span><i style="background-color: transparent;">Monster Hunter </i><span style="background-color: transparent;">releases,
we can just assume it’ll be my most-played game of that year.</span> </span>(<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/monster-hunter-world-review/">Review.</a>)</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://i.imgur.com/0e1pec5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="326" data-original-width="580" src="https://i.imgur.com/0e1pec5.jpg" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b>8. <i>Gris </i>(Switch)</b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">There’s no way to describe <i>Gris </i>without
sounding pretentious. With no real story or central gameplay gimmick, the
selling point of <i>Gris </i>is its beauty.
And I’m not just talking about the visual style, which itself is a breathtaking
blend of pencil and watercolor that’s somehow even more stunning in motion than
in screenshots. I’m talking about how the game <i>feels</i>, how it plays as elegantly as it looks, how each color that
this girl restores to her world seems to bring with it some physical property that
slowly morphs <i>Gris</i>’s 2D landscape
into a breathing world which its own abstract-yet-consistent purpose. I spent
most of this game wondering where developer Nomada was going with this, then
stood awestruck during the final 20 minutes, when the music, animation,
movement and exploration come together to create a climax that’s moving and
uplifting without shoving a statement in our faces. Sometimes art is just
lovely to observe and take in.</span></span><br />
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b>7. <i>Spider-Man </i>(PS4)</b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent;">Insomniac demonstrated in their underrated </span><i style="background-color: transparent;">Sunset Overdrive</i><span style="background-color: transparent;"> that they’re capable of developing fluid,
rewarding open-world movement systems. So it’s no surprise Sony selected them
to carry on the legacy of the franchise that more or less invented fluid,
rewarding open-world movement systems. But while the webslinging in </span><i style="background-color: transparent;">Spider-Man </i><span style="background-color: transparent;">is absolutely ace – enough so
that Insomniac could have forgotten to include a fast-travel system and I
wouldn’t have cared – it’s everything </span><i style="background-color: transparent;">else</i><span style="background-color: transparent;">
that makes this, retroactively, the only Spider-Man game worth caring about.
The combat is full of dastardly toys that players find constant opportunities
to use. The set pieces are wild and climactic. And against all odds, one of the
most emotionally resonant stories to come out of the triple-A scene this year was
in a </span><i style="background-color: transparent;">Spider-Man </i><span style="background-color: transparent;">(anchored by Yuri
Lowenthal, doing a damn convincing job of playing a character half his age). It’s
just the complete package that we’ve always wanted out of a Spider-Man game. It’s
easy to see why so many people fell in love with it.</span> </span>(<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/spider-man-review/">Review.</a>)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b>6. <i>Firewall: Zero Hour </i>(PSVR)</b></span><br />
<br />
This was the year that I got into VR, and while I was frequently awestruck by mechanics that wouldn't have been possible in another format, <i>Firewall</i> is proof that VR can also drastically improve some of what we already have. Really, this is just a low-budget version of <i>Rainbow Six: Siege</i>, yet ten times out of ten, this is the game I'd rather be playing, for the sheer thrill of physically peeking around corners, closing one eye and looking down my sights, and killing dudes by actually pointing a damn gun at them. Not everything translates fluidly to VR, but shooting absolutely <i>does</i>, and this tense squad-based experience (enhanced, as a cooperative experience, by the guarantee that everyone playing has a microphone) is one of the most revelatory examples of that to date. Just be sure to pick up an Aim Controller with it, because it's kinda silly otherwise.<br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b>5. <i>Far: Lone Sails </i>(PC)</b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">There was a moment in <i>Far</i> when
I’d just survived a violent hailstorm and my ship was barely still in one
piece. My sail was broken, my tank was empty, and I’d run out of items that I
was willing to burn for fuel. (I couldn’t sacrifice my beloved radio, just in
case I’d happen upon another mysterious broadcast.) The engine wouldn’t budge,
and I couldn’t even power my repair module without more juice. So I got out, unspooled
the winch rope, and just <i>pulled the ship</i>,
slowly, up hills and across barren landscapes. I think it was even raining. Few
developers could bring their game to a halt like that and call it a win, yet
that’s exactly how strong my connection was with this magnificent piece of
machinery. Fittingly for a game about a two-way relationship, give <i>Far </i>your time and it’ll give back. (<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/far-lone-sails-review/">Review.</a>)</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b>4. <i>Yoku's Island Express </i>(Switch)</b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I’ve never been a pinball fan. I find it incredibly stressful. Things
unfold at too fast a pace with too little of my own input to feel as though my
failings are my own fault. Maybe I’m just awful at it, but that doesn’t make <i>Yoku’s Island Express </i>any less brilliant
for finding a way to make pinball suit my playstyle. Although players are still
expected to pull some crazy stunts with the flippers, the near-nonexistent
penalties for failure and almost total lack of combat meant that I could
finally enjoy these mechanics at a relaxed pace. The gorgeous titular island
would be a joy to explore even with more conventional methods of getting
around, but combining pinball with a Metroidvania is one of those ideas that
sounds crazy until you’ve tried it, at which point you wonder why no one
attempted it before.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b>3. <i>Red Dead Redemption 2 </i>(PS4)</b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent;">While I can totally understand why not everyone gelled with </span><i style="background-color: transparent;">RDR2</i><span style="background-color: transparent;">’s, um, </span><i style="background-color: transparent;">unhurried </i><span style="background-color: transparent;">pace, I’m a little surprised that </span><i style="background-color: transparent;">this</i><span style="background-color: transparent;"> is the Rockstar game that so many people turned on. This
company has been itching to tell serious, long-form stories for a while now,
but the satirical caricatures that fill the </span><i style="background-color: transparent;">Grand
Theft Auto </i><span style="background-color: transparent;">universe demonstrably aren’t capable of exhibiting meaningful
growth. </span><i style="background-color: transparent;">RDR2</i><span style="background-color: transparent;">, meanwhile, is populated
with what may be the strongest cast of characters in any video game I’ve ever
played. And since Rockstar recognizes that the conclusion is largely forgone –
it’s a prequel, after all – they slow the tempo considerably, running the plot
not on the suspense over its destination but on the strength of the
relationships at its core. I maintain that </span><i style="background-color: transparent;">RDR2</i><span style="background-color: transparent;">’s
monster-sized epiloque didn’t need to be there, but this is nevertheless one of
the richest open worlds ever created, and I loved sharing it with these
fascinating people.</span> </span>(<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/red-dead-redemption-2-review/">Review.</a>)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b>2. <i>Into the Breach </i>(PC/Switch)</b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">You may note a conspicuous lack of <i>Dead
Cells</i> on this list. That, to me, demonstrates just how played-out the
side-scrolling roguelike action-platformer is, that we can get one as beautiful
and polished as <i>Dead Cells </i>and it
still barely makes an impression on me. <i>Into
the Breach</i>, on the other hand, is precisely how to breathe new life into
the oversaturated roguelike scene. The premise itself – a tactical game in
which players see enemy moves one turn in advance – is wholly original, but the
way it perfectly maps to procedural generation and permadeath takes <i>Into the Breach</i> to a whole new level. Every
battle feels unique, every loss is fair, and every victory makes you feel like
a tactical mastermind. I only stopped playing this game when I’d <i>literally </i>done everything there was to
do, which should tell you how endlessly replayable it is. I nominate this for
best roguelike of all time. (<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/into-the-breach-switch-review/">Review.</a>)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b>1. <i>Astro Bot: Rescue Mission </i>(PSVR)</b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This
game delivers the joy, purity and innovation of Nintendo’s best games with the
one thing Nintendo refuses to almost ever give us: the excitement of an actual <i>new franchise</i>. While VR is still very
much a niche scene on PC, Sony is doing its best to market PSVR as an
affordable, accessible gateway into the technology for mainstream audiences,
and the warm embrace of <i>Astro Bot</i>
should be at the center of the charge. Every stage of this wonderful platformer
is its own sales pitch on how the format can be innovative, absorbing, amusing,
or (most often) some combination of the three. To spoil any of its many
surprises would be criminal, so I will simply say that I came out of <i>Astro Bot</i> convinced that VR is the
biggest leap forward in gaming since the transition to three dimensions.</span></span><br />
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Now, for the miscellaneous awards and stats.</span><br />
<br />
<b>Most overrated: </b><i>God of War</i><br />
<b>Most underrated: </b><i>Death's Gambit</i><br />
<b>Most overlooked: </b><i>Youropa</i><br />
<b>Most visually striking: </b><i>Gris</i><br />
<b>All-out best-looking game: </b><i>God of War</i><br />
<b>Best story: </b><i>Return of the Obra Dinn</i><br />
<b>Best writing: </b><i>Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales</i><br />
<b>Best character: </b>Arthur Morgan (<i>Red Dead Redemption 2</i>)<br />
<b>Best performance: </b>Yuri Lowenthal (<i>Spider-Man</i>)<br />
<b>Best moment: </b>Entering Saint Denis for the first time (<i>Red Dead Redemption 2</i>)<br />
<b>Best original soundtrack:</b><i><b> </b>Gris</i><br />
<b>Best licensed soundtrack: </b><i>Rifter</i><br />
<b>Biggest surprise: </b><i>Attack on Titan 2</i><br />
<b>Biggest disappointment: </b><i>Guacamelee! 2</i><br />
<b>Comeback of the year: </b><i>Spider-Man</i><br />
<b>Best multiplayer game: </b><i>Firewall: Zero Hour</i><br />
<b>Most enjoyable bad game: </b><i>Just Cause 4</i><br />
<b>Least enjoyable good game: </b><i>Paratopic</i><br />
<b>Best free game: </b><i>Gwent: The Witcher Card Game</i><br />
<b>Game that I spent the most time with: </b><i>Monster Hunter World</i><br />
<b>Game that I spent the least time with before dismissing: </b><i>Outbreak: The Nightmare Chronicles</i><br />
<b>Game that I most wanted to play, but didn't: </b><i>Frostpunk</i><br />
<b>Game I literally own that I most wanted to play, but still haven't: </b><i>Usurper</i><br />
<b>Best game that I still haven't finished: </b><i>Octopath Traveler</i><br />
<b>All-out worst game that I played: </b><i>Immortal: Unchained</i><br />
<b>Best non-2018 game that I first played in 2018: </b><i>Superhot VR</i><br />
<b>Best remake/re-release:<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></b><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><i>Lumines Remastered</i></span><b> </b></span><br />
<b>Most anticipated game this coming year: </b><i>Doom Eternal / Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice </i>(tie)<br />
<br />
<b>2018 releases that I played: </b>100<br />
<b>2018 releases that I completed: </b>63<br />
<b>2018 releases that I'm still working on: </b>11<br />
<b>2018 releases that I've shelved indefinitely: </b>8<br />
<b>2018 releases that I flat-out gave up on: </b>18<br />
<b>2018 releases for which I've won every trophy/achievement: </b>4<br />
<b>2018 releases I've reviewed: </b>26<br />
<br />Susquatchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04067561426934895146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3222696689475171071.post-24459458391137232192018-11-14T01:16:00.002-08:002022-01-27T21:39:35.436-08:00Shadow of the Tomb Raider review: "All that for another riddle"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>Shadow of the Tomb Raider </i>feels like the last dying breath of a particularly insufferable breed of AAA game, one that goes well beyond the old "dark, gritty re<span style="font-family: inherit;">-imagining" <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">cliché</span> that we've been mocking since 2004, when the Prince of Persia screamed "YOU BITCH!" at a woman in a steel thong. That was just lame and embarrassing. <i>Shadow </i>is grimy, unpleasant and gross.</span><br />
<br />
To discuss <i>Shadow </i>as a game feels like a waste of time, because it's exactly like the last two, which is to say that it flits so haphazardly between genres that it lacks an identity of its own beyond its desire to showcase elaborate environments. And even <i>that's </i>more of a nuisance than anything, since the levels are so visually cluttered that we need to keep activating detective mode to highlight all of the interactive objects in bright orange. Every time we do, Lara blurts out the objective, over and over. Have to raise that bell somehow. Have to raise that bell somehow. Have to raise that bell somehow.<br />
<br />
You may have noticed something peculiar about the screenshots I'm using here. Right out of the box, <i>Shadow</i> comes with several alternate skins for Lara, one of which transforms her into the vintage low-poly-count version from the PS1 days. I highly recommend that you take advantage of this. It's the only hint of self-awareness present in <i>Shadow</i>, and the only thing that kept me sane as I was beaten relentlessly with the melodrama stick.<br />
<br />
I don't know where these new <i>Tomb Raider</i> games got the idea that they have anything interesting to say. Their plots are pure serial, no weightier than an <i>Indiana Jones</i> or an <i>Uncharted</i> or any action-adventure in which an explorer traces a series of riddles in order to uncover some mystical artifact that houses a terrible power and, yeah, probably should have just stayed buried. The difference is that those two franchises are lighthearted in tone. Their heroes don't take any of this seriously because they don't inhabit the real world.<br />
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<i>Tomb Raider</i>, bless its little heart, actually wants to say something profound about violence. The material is certainly there. When the villain inevitably gives Lara the whole "And how many people have <i>you</i> killed?" spiel, he's got a point. Her actions in <i>Shadow </i>result in the deaths of thousands of people - not just gun-toting mercenaries, but actual innocent bystanders. She's a maniac. She notices it, as does everyone else. Yet the game brings this up repeatedly without having the stones to <i>address</i> it in any meaningful way. Nothing is learned - not by Lara, and certainly not by Crystal Dynamics, who end <i>Shadow </i>with a blatant sequel hook as if another mass-murder crusade with this selfish asshole is something we want.<br />
<br />
<i>Shadow</i> begins in Mexico, where everyone is wearing skull masks. Does it strike anyone else as a tad racist that Mexicans are only ever depicted as wearing skull masks? Do people really think Mexicans celebrate Day of the Dead year-round? Do Crystal Dynamics think we won't believe it's Mexico if we don't see any skull masks?<br />
<br />
Anyway, Lara wears a poncho and a skull mask to blend in, but then wanders around a town square asking people questions in English, so good job. Her old pals Trinity are looking for an ancient dagger that, when combined with a special box, transforms its user into a god. Lara's good at solving puzzles and deciphering languages by now, and she ascertains from some Mayan murals that removing the dagger will create cataclysms - storms, earthquakes, volcanoes, anything that can cause the environments around Lara to collapse in a very over-elaborate and heavily scripted way while the player holds up on the analog stick, pretending to be involved.<br />
<br />
She takes it anyway, of course, because she doesn't want it to fall into the wrong hands. Then she loses it because she gets hit once. Really. During an encounter with Dominguez, the main bad guy, one of his goons steps up behind Lara and strikes her with the butt of his rifle. She drops the dagger and Dominguez picks it up. After all of the punishment this series has piled onto Lara, a single pistol whip, it turns out, is all it takes to turn the tables.<br />
<br />
And then a whole bunch of innocent bystanders die as the dagger brings to Cozumel its first cataclysm, a tsunami. The water that floods the streets is immediately dotted with fresh corpses. Lara has to actually push some of the bodies aside as she's swimming to safety (all while we're holding up on the analog stick, pretending to be involved). As she climbs to a safe rooftop, a child falls to his death. Lovely.<br />
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Now, look. A lot of horrific things happened in the 2013 reboot, but the context was different. Lara was new to this sort of thing and she was stranded on an uncharted island full of lunatics who wanted to murder her. She didn't have a choice. But she escaped, and now lives in a mansion with a cushy inheritance. That she chooses to re-enter this world of grisly violence tells me that she enjoys it, and certainly doesn't mind rolling over thousands of locals in search of her latest adrenaline fix.<br />
<br />
Anyway, having decided she's killed enough people in Mexico, she flies to Peru, where she brings with her a plague of destruction. Seriously, her plane hasn't even landed before a massive storm rolls through and rains hell on the Amazon. The plane crashes, and the one character on board whom we hadn't previously met dies. Lara is fine, but she loses all of her gear. So, conveniently, she has to go re-acquire all of the stuff that she obtained in the first two games.<br />
<br />
She finds one of those "hidden cities" that always show up in stories like these, i.e. a city that's in broad daylight and therefore managed to stay hidden because, I guess, no one flew over that area with a plane or helicopter. Curiously, it's still close enough to civilization that an oil refinery is right downriver, though I suspect it's there purely so Lara can blow some stuff up in a frenzied rampage when she thinks her dumb friend has been killed.<br />
<br />
Right, Jonah's back. Do me a favor and describe Jonah without mentioning anything about his appearance. You can't. I hate this character, and I hate that rash decisions are constantly being made for the sake of keeping him out of harm's way. Lara doesn't even flinch over the deaths of probably a quarter of the population of South America, but point a gun at this one guy with zero defining characteristics and <i>watch the hell out</i>. Anyway, one of the bad guys tells Lara over the radio that he's killed Jonah, and she believes him, because she's the only person who thinks that anything of consequence can happen to important people in this world.<br />
<br />
The main villain has set up a cult in the hidden city, so some of the inhabitants want to complete the ritual while the rest side with the <i>other</i> psychopath. Some Gollum-like subterranean creatures are involved, and Lara spends a <i>lot</i> of time underwater, either engaging in stealth sequences wherein players avoid schools of piranhas (yes, really), or <i>really struggling </i>to fit through a <i>very thin crack </i>and acting as if she's in any danger so long as players are holding up on the analog stick, pretending to be involved.<br />
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The villain eventually completes the ritual and becomes Kukulkan, the god of glowing. Lara justifies her presence by shooting him a bunch. After the credits roll, we cut to a scene in which Lara is back at her estate, writing a letter to (who else?) Jonah, contemplating her role in these affairs: <b>"I thought that taking control of my life meant venturing out to do something extraordinary. I thought I had to fix everything. But the mysteries of the world are to cherish more than to solve."</b><br />
<br />
Yes! <i>Finally</i> we're getting somewhere. To quote one of my favorite games, a corpse should be left well alone. Yes, Lara, <i>maybe</i> this is more trouble than it's worth. Maybe it's pointless and you should just stop inserting yourself into every--<br />
<br />
<b>"I am just one of their many protectors."</b><br />
<br />
Oh, go to hell, Lara. This is all your fault. You just obliterated half of Mexico and Peru because you're too rich to not be the center of attention. If you'd just stayed in bed that day, maybe Dominguez wouldn't have found the artifacts he needed to ascend to godhood. Or maybe he would have, in which case someone <i>else</i> with a gun inevitably would have stopped him, because apparently that's all it takes.<br />
<br />
She's not done: <b>"I'm not sure what the future holds in store, Jonah. But whatever adventure's on the horizon, I can't wait to meet it."</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
I mean, I have a <i>rough</i> idea of what the future holds. There'll be another ancient artifact for you to "protect," and you'll fail to protect it because Jonah got stung by a bee or whatever, the villain uses it, and then either his greed will bring about his downfall, or bullets will. Hundreds of locals will die in the process, but as long as upper-one-percent Lara and her space-wasting best friend get off scot-free, they'll be primed for another one of these wacky population-wiping adventures.<br />
<br />
Or perhaps the future holds yet another reboot, in which one of gaming's most iconic heroes goes back to being one.Susquatchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04067561426934895146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3222696689475171071.post-68609226846793058882018-05-15T02:11:00.000-07:002018-05-15T02:11:01.865-07:00Review Shots: VR Edition<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Hello there. If you follow me on Twitter, you've likely caught on to the fact that I recently bought an HTC Vive. The technology's a couple of years old, so I doubt I have anything new to contribute to the conversation as to the future of virtual reality, but here are some quick reviews for a handful of the games I've been playing since I got the thing.</div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b><i>Doom VFR </i>(PC)</b></span><br />
<br />
I shouldn't have been surprised that the blazing pace of 2016's magnificent <i>Doom</i> reboot doesn't translate well to an environment where you're just statically repositioning yourself like a chess piece, but here we are. I'd have settled for the awkward movement system - and, more importantly, the fact that <i>Doom</i> doesn't feel like it's been adequately re-balanced for it - if the game were to fill my long-standing desire for more <i>Doom </i>single-player content. But while <i>Doom VFR </i>technically features a new "story," all of the levels have just been pulled from the original game. So what you're getting is a version of <i>Doom</i> that's a fraction of the length and nowhere near as satisfying to play. It's a rush job, and I don't know why it exists. <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>5/10</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b><br /></b></span>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b><i>Superhot VR </i>(PC)</b></span><br />
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Now <i>this</i> is how you do it. The driving concept behind <i>Superhot</i> - that time only moves when you do - is still in effect, but this is an entirely separate campaign composed of scenarios in which you don't have to move from the spot you're standing, allowing you to focus purely on the combat. The process of punching a guy in the face, grabbing his gun out of midair and using it to shoot down several of his buddies is all the most invigorating when you're actually making the hand movements yourself, and moving your head to the side and hearing a bullet whiz past your ear in slow-motion never gets old. (Not that it has time to - <i>Superhot</i> is as lean as the original.) Even the clean, extremely readable visual style is a perfect fit for VR, which doesn't allow for strong detail or a particularly clear picture. I'm a huge fan of the first <i>Superhot</i> and I daresay this one is even better. It should be one of the first purchases for anyone who buys a VR headset. <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>10/10</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b><i>Sacred Four </i>(PC)</b></span><br />
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This is basically an arcade light gun game straight out of the late '90s, but instead of shooting (as is done in an awful lot of VR games, I'm noticing), you're actually slinging blades on chains, Kratos-style. The physics are super wonky and the entire aesthetic feels several generations behind, though not, I hasten to add, in a way that detracts from the game's enjoyment, and the unique motion controls kind of lend it a feel distinct from the games it's mimicking. <i>Sacred Four</i> goes down very smoothly and the bosses, particularly the last one, are big and bombastic. Don't go in expecting a AAA-quality release here - even the audio quality is kind of charmingly bad - but taken for what it is, a five-dollar arcade game full of dumb thrills, I had a good time with it. <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>6/10</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b><i>Job Simulator </i>(PC)</b></span><br />
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This is probably one of the best introductions to virtual reality I've played, as it's a cute, funny little game with zero tension or stakes. After robots (which just look like floating computer monitors) have taken over and everything is done by automation, museums attempt to emulate the old-timey experience of having a boring job - office worker, store clerk, etc. The simulations are amusingly inaccurate, however, and the whole thing is essentially a physics playground in which you can toy around with objects and see which combinations and effects the developers prepared for. (Can you put a non-paper object in the printer and duplicate it? Yes! Can you make fire extinguisher soup? Also yes!) It's simple, and it's not so much a "game" as an interactive VR showcase, but I had fun burning a couple of hours with it. <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>7/10</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b><i>Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality </i>(PC)</b></span><br />
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Made by the same team that did <i>Job Simulator</i>, and it's the same general concept - a physics-based screwing-around showcase, this time as a Morty clone performing chores in Rick's garage while he and the real Morty go off on adventures. I'm a fan of the show, and <i>Virtual Rick-ality</i> aptly recaptures its sense of humor, even if it made me smile more than laugh. I'd say the big issue here is the value proposition, since you're basically paying $30 for barely more than an hour of content, accompanied by a B-grade <i>Rick and Morty</i> story. Some of the puzzles and set pieces are a bit more intricate than the ones found in <i>Job Simulator</i>, but I ultimately found that game better-paced, more varied and ultimately funnier. Fans of the show will get a kick out of the references, but I recommend they wait to catch this one on sale. <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>6/10</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b><i>The Perfect Sniper </i>(PC)</b></span><br />
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You'd think sniping would be a natural fit for VR, since you're shooting and standing still, but actually holding a gun steady with motion controls is inhumanly difficult. Even real-life snipers are propping their rifles against something when they shoot, but in VR, you've got nothing to lean on. <i>The Perfect Sniper</i> is aware of this, and compensates by being dull and virtually free of stakes. Save for one mission near the very end that involves killing someone who's in a speeding vehicle, your objectives are unsatisfyingly quick and easy, and the plot - narrated by a handler who sounds distractingly like Aaron Paul - fails to make you care about what you're accomplishing. If sniping can be made both playable and exciting in VR, this game doesn't pull it off. <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>4/10</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b><i>Sairento VR</i> (PC)</b></span><br />
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Essentially a Matrix simulator with some of the most fluid movement controls I've yet experienced in VR, morphing the usual "blink" teleportation system into effortless wall runs and double jumps. The combat here is absolute bliss and manages to make bullet-time fresh again by giving you such a direct role in the killing - it never gets old to leap over a soldier, trigger slow-motion midway through, look down, and plant a couple of bullets in his head. <i>Sairento VR</i>'s mechanics are wonderful, which is why I wish it were a more fully-featured game, one with greater enemy and objective variety, levels that don't feel like they belong in a PS1 game, and a story that doesn't unfold almost entirely off-screen. The core combat is terrific enough to make <i>Sairento VR</i> worth checking out, but with a proper budget behind it, this could have been a masterpiece. <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>7/10</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">With that done, here are some actual reviews, of acceptable length, that I've recently written.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/playerunknowns-battlegrounds-review/"><i>PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds </i>(PC)</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/seven-the-days-long-gone-review/"><i>Seven: The Days Long Gone </i>(PC)</a></span><br />
<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/monster-hunter-world-review/"><i>Monster Hunter World </i>(PS4)</a><br />
<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/a-normal-lost-phone-review/"><i>A Normal Lost Phone </i>(Switch)</a><br />
<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/secret-of-mana-review/"><i>Secret of Mana </i>(PS4)</a><br />
<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/castle-of-heart-review/"><i>Castle of Heart </i>(Switch)</a><br />
<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/ghost-of-a-tale-review/"><i>Ghost of a Tale </i>(PC)</a><br />
<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/minit-review/"><i>Minit </i>(PS4)</a><br />
<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/god-of-war-2018-review/"><i>God of War </i>(PS4)</a>Susquatchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04067561426934895146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3222696689475171071.post-39337953787895275232018-03-15T00:22:00.000-07:002018-03-15T00:22:29.987-07:00So get this - Metal Gear Survive is bad<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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However you feel about the <i>Metal Gear </i>series, there can be no denying that it is the gaming medium's foremost auteurist work. No series in the industry can more famously be tied to the vision of a single person. So why Konami would throw that person out on the street and make <i>Metal Gear </i>indistinguishable from a thousand other games on the market is, like everything else Konami has done over the past several years, a mystery.<br />
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Konami being its awful self is partly why I feel comfortable abusing <i>Metal Gear Survive</i> despite very clearly not being in its target audience. Survival games aren't my scene, and there are few things I'm more sick of than zombies. I recognize these biases. But then I see the microtransactions, the maps recycled from <i>Metal Gear Solid V</i>, and the always-online requirement despite <i>Survive</i> predominantly being a single-player game, and I don't feel terribly guilty.<br />
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Understand that I'm no purist. I'm fine with the <i>Metal Gear </i>franchise branching out into other genres, as evidenced by my <a href="http://www.honestgamers.com/12160/pc/metal-gear-rising-revengeance/review.html">positive review of <i>Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance</i></a>. But zombies suck, and they have always sucked. And nothing has more vividly illustrated that than the transition from <i>MGSV</i>, which had arguably the most advanced and emergent AI I'd ever seen, to <i>Survive</i>, which transplants many of the same mechanics and locations into a world where all of the enemies are stupid. By definition, they are stupid. If they acted intelligently, they wouldn't be zombies.<br />
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Lo and behold, the best and most intuitive stealth mechanics ever conceived are now wasted on a game in which stealth is <i>never</i> necessary, not even once. <i>Survive</i>'s encounter design is more about horde control, which it turns out is staggeringly simple, since players can erect defensive barriers out of thin air, and <i>one</i> segment of fence is literally all it takes to hold off a group of zombies. They'll all just <a href="https://twitter.com/MikeSuskie/status/966931719017324544">pile up against it</a> instead of, I don't know, <i>walking around it</i>. And then you can just stand there, poking a spear through the links, safely picking away at them until they're dead. <i>Survive</i> is an insultingly easy game even when stealth never enters the equation.<br />
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I don't know why <i>Survive</i> actually incorporates survival elements. They don't really add anything. Setting up gardens and water collection facilities at your base is a simple affair, and so the need to constantly relieve your hunger and thirst is a task rather than a challenge.<br />
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Most of <i>Survive</i>'s world is covered in "Dust," a thick haze in which vision is extremely limited and breathing is impossible without an oxygen tank. Monitoring your air supply is a mildly interesting mechanic, as is the need to maintain your bearings with so many navigational handicaps attached. (Map data isn't logged until you return from an expedition, so you have to rely on light beacons whenever you venture out into new territory for the first time.) It is offset, however, by there being nothing interesting to see or do in <i>Survive</i>. Exploring yields the reward of more dumb zombies, more stockpiles of crafting supplies, and more defense missions.<br />
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I suppose there is one exception: the Lord of Dust, a hulking monstrosity that greatly reminded me of the <a href="https://youtu.be/AhaulXxlqCQ">towering creature at the end of <i>The Mist</i></a>. It's so large that, in the thick Dust, you can only see a fraction of it at once. Bumping into it in the wild, and feeling the controller shake with every step, is an arresting image.<br />
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But even the majesty of that doesn't last, since the Lord of Dust spends its later appearances in broad daylight, in which is looks like a featureless lump of coal rather than the Lovecraftian horror we thought we were looking at when own vision was obscured. It's featured in a couple of major set pieces in the back half of the campaign, but despite the game frequently telling you that you'll be fighting it, all you really do is hold off waves of zombies while it gets itself stuck in a trap.<br />
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<i>Survive</i>'s plot is dumb, by the way. That may sound redundant to people who were never on board with Kojima's particular brand of storytelling to begin with, but at least the guy researched what he was writing and gave his characters an abundance of personality. He had ambition - <i>too much</i>, if anything, the polar opposite of <i>Survive</i>'s phoned-in attempt to expand the universe. Most of the "cutscenes" are just static portraits accompanied by voiceovers, and the only memorable characters are memorable for being <i>annoying</i>: the two AI buddies, who speak with the most excruciating "robot voices" I've ever heard, and who constantly - <i>constantly</i> - ring you up to alert you about things you already know. The story's intended emotional payoff for them is laughable.<br />
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I played about 95% of <i>Survive</i> with the sound off, listening to podcasts. I was never scared, excited, or engaged. I rented this expecting to hate it, yet the reality is even worse - <i>Survive</i> is just so damn dull, so drab and unoriginal and corporate and <i>boring</i>, that I can't even bother to get worked up about it. It's just 20-plus hours of my life spent doing a thing.<br />
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It's a <b>4/10 </b>by any objective measure, but let's lower that to a <b>3/10 </b>since Konami felt like charging an extra ten bucks for a second save slot. Not that I would ever want to play through this crap more than once, but it's the principle of the thing.Susquatchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04067561426934895146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3222696689475171071.post-73269042963900750162018-03-04T13:09:00.002-08:002018-03-04T23:05:53.199-08:00Oscar predictions! Get some!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Best Picture:</b> <i>The Shape of Water</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Best Director: </b>Guillermo del Toro (<i>The Shape of Water</i>)</span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Best Actor: </b>Gary Oldman (<i>Darkest Hour</i>)</span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Best Actress: </b>Frances McDormand (<i>Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri</i>)</span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Best Supporting Actor: </b>Sam Rockwell (<i>Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri</i>)</span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Best Supporting Actress: </b>Allison Janney (<i>I, Tonya</i>)</span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Best Adapted Screenplay:</b> <i>Call Me by Your Name</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Best Original Screenplay:</b> <i>Get Out</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Best Animated Feature: </b><i>Coco</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><strike><b>Best Documentary Feature: </b><i>Faces Places</i></strike></span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Best Foreign Language Film: </b><i>A Fantastic Woman</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Best Cinematography:</b> <i>Blade Runner 2049</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Best Costume Design:</b> <i>Phantom Thread</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><strike><b>Best Documentary Short Subject:</b> <i>Heroin(e)</i></strike></span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Best Film Editing:</b> <i>Dunkirk</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Best Makeup and Hairstyling:</b> <i>Darkest Hour</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Best Original Score: </b><i>The Shape of Water</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Best Original Song:</b> "Remember Me" (<i>Coco</i>)</span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><strike><b>Best Production Design: </b><i>Blade Runner 2049</i></strike></span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Best Animated Short Film:</b> <i>Dear Basketball</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><strike><b>Best Live Action Short Film: </b><i>DeKalb Elementary</i></strike></span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Best Sound Editing:</b> <i>Dunkirk</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Best Sound Mixing:</b> <i>Dunkirk</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Best Visual Effects:</b> <i>Blade Runner 2049</i></span>Susquatchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04067561426934895146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3222696689475171071.post-29318866354979098352018-01-20T02:13:00.000-08:002018-01-20T02:26:45.768-08:00Review Shots: 2017 Cleanup Addition<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b><i>Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus </i>(PC)</b><br />
<b><i><br /></i></b>I was <i>so</i> primed for this game, having finally played through (and loved) <i>Wolfenstein: The New Order</i> earlier in the year and being very much in the mood to punish Nazis for <i>absolutely no particular reason whatsoever</i>. And the game's first half is actually quite good, a solid selection of memorable set pieces and engaging character moments. But at a certain point - and if you've played it, you know what I'm talking about - <i>Wolfenstein II </i>doesn't just go off the rails, but turns around, rips the rails out of the ground, and tosses them off a cliff. The longer I played, the more <i>Wolfenstein II </i>felt like a directionless attempt to one-up the first, but lacking the tightness of that game's narrative or any awareness of what 2016's <i>Doom </i>reboot brought to this genre. (Clue #1: No one plays a game like this for stealth.) I was hoping this would be a GOTY contender, but instead, I struggle to remember that it even released, and I can barely muster any excitement for the next part of Blazkowicz's story. Not a bad game, but one of the year's biggest letdowns.<b> 6/10</b><br />
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<b><i>What Remains of Edith Finch </i>(PC)</b><br />
<b><i><br /></i></b>Although it usually takes some extra pushing to get me to play a narrative adventure game, I eventually checked out <i>Edith Finch </i>and can say that I agree with the consensus. Centered on a "cursed" family in which nearly every member seems to die in a tragic manner (albeit one befitting of the character), <i>Edith Finch </i>follows its title character as she explores her old house and relives her relatives' final moments. It'd be criminal of me to describe these vignettes in any detail, so I'll simply say that the game is just the right combination of dark and whimsical, avoiding the trap of making this cavalcade of horrific deaths too sensationalist. As a lovely showcase in visual storytelling, my only complaint is that the narration is often piled on too thick, the devs seemingly unwilling to trust the audience to follow what's happening when the vignettes themselves are almost universally masterful. The cannery sequence in particular, for reasons I won't spoil, is a brilliant emulation of what it's like when a productive mind slaves away in a working-class job. <b> 9/10</b><br />
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<b><i>Tacoma </i>(PC)</b><br />
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This is the sophomore project from Fullbright, the studio that previously brought us <i>Gone Home</i>. I enjoyed that game for using misdirective tropes to veil a surprise ending that was, in fact, far more grounded than what we'd been conjuring up in our minds. <i>Tacoma </i>kind of feels like an inverse of that game's strengths - although there are "twists," they don't force us to re-evaluate what came before them and they're not the reason to play. Instead, play <i>Tacoma</i> for some of the most authentic-sounding conversations of 2017, depicting a crew of six after an accident dooms their space station. <i>Tacoma</i>'s coolest innovation is the fact that its crew's interactions have been recorded via an augmented reality interface which allows us to relive pivotal moments, and in realistic fashion, multiple things are often happening at once and it's necessary to rewind and view scenes from two or three angles in order to see everything. Although the ending is a bit weak, it didn't make me in any way regretful of having spent a few hours with these convincingly-sketched characters. <b>8/10</b><br />
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<b><i>Domina </i>(PC)</b><br />
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This is a gladiator management sim featuring pixelated graphics and a <a href="https://twitter.com/MikeSuskie/status/938922741662666752">rockin' soundtrack</a>. With very little control over how the actual battles play out, your job is instead to run a ludus, monitoring your funds and keeping your slaves trained, nourished, and well-equipped for an increasingly trying series of battles. There's a lot to like here, particularly stylistically, though it's also a bit simple in design, since upgrading gladiators is a relatively straightforward affair and only being able to hire a few specialized employees at once barely registers as a restriction since most of them can be fired as soon as they complete the handful of tasks they're needed for (usually involving ludus renovations). Although perma-fail isn't a <i>massive</i> setback given that a campaign only lasts an hour or two, random number generation can still be frustrating given that they're no way, going into a battle, of knowing whether or not you're prepared. The best thing about <i>Domina</i> is the requirement for getting the "good" ending. I won't spoil it, but it cleverly rewards a certain type of player. <b>7/10</b><br />
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<b><i>Echo </i>(PC)</b><br />
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After a seemingly endless intro sequence in which players do nothing but slowly walk through corridors for a full half hour, <i>Echo</i> finally unveils its gimmick: that the enemies constantly mimic the way you play. Though intriguing, from the few hours I spent with the game, <i>Echo</i> never does anything interesting enough with the concept to rescue the experience from the tedium of its design. A mark of a stealth game's quality is how much fun it remains when the player gets sighted, and here, it's a mess - the main character is laughably fragile (she can't take more than one hit in quick succession), her gun is far too short on ammo, and the checkpoints are frustrating beyond belief. The point where I gave up was when I was arbitrarily asked to flick about two-dozen switches scattered around a massive room teeming with enemies, and after hitting all but one, <a href="https://twitter.com/MikeSuskie/status/931298749112115200">this ridiculous glitch</a> forced me to restart the entire ordeal. Yeah, go to hell, <i>Echo</i>.<b> 4/10</b><br />
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<b><i>Fire Emblem Warriors </i>(Switch)</b><br />
<b><br /></b>My only experience with the <i>Dynasty Warriors </i>series is the occasional crossovers we get with franchises I'm already a fan of. <i>Hyrule Warriors </i>was my introduction, and now my interest in <i>Fire Emblem</i> has pulled me back in. While the simplistic nature of these games - spamming a button to cut through thousands upon thousands of enemy soldiers in a rather transparent power fantasy - would almost certainly wear on me were I to seek each and every one, I'm cool with hitting the franchise up every few years, particular in in a season like autumn 2017, where something like <i>Fire Emblem Warriors </i>is an effective counterweight to all of the mentally taxing releases I ran through. Seeing these characters in 3D, looking like they did in the pre-rendered cutscenes that blew me away at the time in <i>Path of Radiance</i>, is a joy, and the signature mechanics of the <i>Fire Emblem </i>series (like permadeath and the rock-paper-scissors weapon balance) give this particular <i>Warriors</i> entry a unique flavor beyond its visuals. Nothing altogether innovative, and the dimension-hopping mechanics used to bring characters from different eras together was already seen in the series' mobile entry earlier in the year, but this game just went down so easily for me.<b> 7/10</b><br />
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To close us off, here are all of the proper reviews I've written since the last time I did one of these updates.<br />
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<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/horizon-zero-dawn-second-opinion/"><i>Horizon: Zero Dawn</i> (PS4)</a><br />
<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/mario-kart-8-deluxe-review/"><i>Super Mario 8 Deluxe </i>(Switch)</a><br />
<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/yooka-laylee-review/"><i>Yooka-Laylee </i>(PC)</a><br />
<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/vanquish-review-2/"><i>Vanquish </i>(PC)</a><br />
<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/this-is-not-a-review-everspace/"><i>Everspace </i>(PC)</a><br />
<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/arms-review/"><i>Arms </i>(Switch)</a><br />
<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/beholder-blissful-sleep-review/"><i>Beholder: Blissful Sleep </i>(PC)</a><br />
<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/immortal-planet-review/"><i>Immortal Planet </i>(PC)</a><br />
<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/hellblade-senuas-sacrifice-review/"><i>Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice </i>(PC)</a><br />
<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/sundered-review/"><i>Sundered </i>(PS4)</a><br />
<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/lawbreakers-review/"><i>LawBreakers </i>(PC)</a><br />
<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/splatoon-2-review/"><i>Splatoon 2</i> (Switch)</a><br />
<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/uncharted-the-lost-legacy-review/"><i>Uncharted: The Lost Legacy </i>(PS4)</a><br />
<a href="https://gamecritics.com/brad-gallaway/absolver-review/"><i>Absolver </i>(PS4)</a><br />
<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/distrust-review/"><i>Distrust </i>(PC)</a><br />
<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/inmates-review/"><i>Inmates </i>(PC)</a><br />
<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/cuphead-review/"><i>Cuphead </i>(PC)</a><br />
<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/the-evil-within-2-review/"><i>The Evil Within 2 </i>(PS4)</a><br />
<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/super-mario-odyssey-review/"><i>Super Mario Odyssey </i>(Switch)</a><br />
<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/doom-review-switch/"><i>Doom </i>(Switch)</a><br />
<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/divinity-original-sin-ii-review/"><i>Divinity: Original Sin II </i>(PC)</a>Susquatchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04067561426934895146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3222696689475171071.post-13595327990522106652018-01-14T01:40:00.000-08:002018-01-14T02:54:17.348-08:00In which I somehow narrow my favorite games of 2017 down to ten<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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We survived 2017. Good for us. I sincerely believe that 2018 (aka The Midterm Year) will be better, but just in case it isn't, let us reflect on the one thing that can be relied upon to provide us with endless, joyous escapism: the games.<br />
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Since there were far too many exceptional titles to squeeze into a mere ten this year, I'm devoting this entire intro segment to the honorable mentions, which are extensive. Firstly, I'm not an easy lay when it comes to the narrative adventure genre (I'm trying to go cold turkey on the term "walking simulator"), but there were two class entries this year: <i><b>What Remains of Edith Finch</b></i>, a whimsical yet heartbreaking exercise in visual storytelling that only occasionally lets its narration get in the way, and <i><b>Tacoma</b></i>, a sci-fi mystery in which the twists take second fiddle to well-sketched characters and authentic-sounding conversations.<br />
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Also, since one of the qualifiers for my top-ten list is that I need to have actually finished the game (since you never know when something's gonna pull a <i>Final Fantasy XV</i>), here are a couple of excellent titles that I'm still working on. <i style="font-weight: bold;">Golf Story </i>ranks as one of the year's biggest surprises, a charming and often hilarious RPG that's also a perfectly solid golf sim. <i style="font-weight: bold;">Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle </i>is essentially <i>XCOM</i> without all of the stuff that made me quit <i>XCOM</i>. Finally, I've only just started <i><b>Xenoblade Chronicles 2</b></i>, but I'm already more invested in it than I've been with any other JRPG in ages.<br />
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A few other standouts from throughout 2017: <i style="font-weight: bold;">Sniper Elite 4 </i>is the best Nazi-killing game of the year (yes, to my great surprise, beating out that other one), <i style="font-weight: bold;">Snipperclips</i> was a delightful slice of old-fashioned couch multiplayer, <i style="font-weight: bold;">Gorogoa </i>is odd and creative and difficult to describe, <i style="font-weight: bold;">Arms </i>is maybe the best use of motion controls ever in addition to being one of the few fighting games I actually understand, and <i style="font-weight: bold;">LawBreakers </i>was a fantastic throwback to <i>Unreal Tournament</i> that would easily have made my top ten if the servers had been well-populated for more than a few weeks.<br />
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And at the end of the day, I do want to give a shout-out to both <i style="font-weight: bold;">Horizon: Zero Dawn </i>and <i style="font-weight: bold;">Super Mario Odyssey</i>. While I'm not as head-over-heels with them as the rest of the gaming community is, they're both fine titles that would certainly have been top-ten contenders in a less stacked year.<br />
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By the way, I was on the <a href="https://gamecritics.com/tim-spaeth/gamecritics-com-radio-2017-holiday-awards-spectacular/">GameCritics Game of the Year 2017 podcast</a>, so go listen to that if you want to hear more of my thoughts.<br />
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Now then...<br />
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<b>10. <i>Distrust </i>(PC)</b><br />
<b><br /></b><i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">"Don’t play <span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Distrust</span> anticipating a playable version of [John] Carpenter’s cult classic [The Thing]. Play it, instead, for being an intelligent strategy-survival game that’s atmospheric and tense as hell entirely on its own merits... <span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Distrust</span> is a roguelike, though it’s the good kind where there’s a valuable lesson in every failure... A terrific engine for emergent thrills, often due to the player’s own negligence... It’s the sign of intelligent and well-considered mechanics that something as inherently repetitive as <span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Distrust</span> never once felt tedious to me." </span></i>(<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/distrust-review/">Review.</a>)<br />
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I thought I'd grown allergic to the word "roguelike," but it turns out that I'm only repelled by the side-scrolling action/platformer variety (of which we have most definitely had our fill by now). <i>Distrust </i>is a near-perfect exercise in the roguelike subgenre. Nothing about the game is overtly cheap or unfair, which lends leeway to the permadeath mechanic, and while there are numerous rules to be learned, they're both logical and consistent. Each run leaves you more prepared for your next, and the game is inherently unique enough (survival that channels at least the tone and aesthetic of <i>The Thing</i>) that I took pleasure in dipping back in even as I was partaking in randomized variations on the same handful of tasks.<br />
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I used to think that the only way for a roguelike to hook me was for me to carry <i>some </i>degree of progress from one run to the next, for a death to not wipe the slate completely clean. And although that usually helps, <i>Sundered</i>, my least-favorite game of 2017, demonstrated how unrewarding a roguelike can become when it's <i>entirely </i>about grinding for accumulated stats, with nothing to actually be learned. Though it took many tries for me to finish <i>Distrust</i>, I left the game with the satisfaction of having mastered something with zero hand-holding. It's a brutal game, but exquisitely balanced.<br />
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<b>9. <i>Prey </i>(PC)</b><br />
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Well, this was certainly a nice surprise. Arkane Studios' world-building-first outlook on narrative design has made me increasingly less interested in their <i>Dishonored </i>series, in which the finer details are wasted on stories and exchanges so devoid of wit or energy that I can't be bothered to care. <i>Prey</i> turns out to be a far better use of their talents, as its setting <i>is </i>its story, and by keeping its most important characters off-screen for the majority of the game, whatever plot developments that may have come off as unconvincing if presented to us directly instead unfold in our minds as we explore the magnificent Talos I station and piece together the mysteries surrounding this magnificent imaginary environment, a place that existed long before our main character arrived.<br />
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This <i>Prey</i> reboot (which, to my knowledge, shares its title and literally nothing else from the 2006 release) owes a lot to both <i>System Shock </i>and <i>BioShock </i>and yet is, to my mind, far superior to either of those franchises. It beats <i>System Shock </i>by not mistaking complexity for depth, building systems in which players are rewarded for genuine resourcefulness (like the ability to break down any item into raw materials which can then be re-purposed, ensuring that anything the player picks up is theoretically useful). And it beats <i>BioShock </i>because its attempts to narratively justify its more fundamentally game-y elements succeed, because why the hell would anyone in Rapture have the need to set other people on fire?<br />
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I daresay that Talos I is the best setting of any video game this year. If someone were to collect this station's collision data and assemble an interactive 3D map <a href="https://youtu.be/tyTB5vhKGSI">the way someone did with <i>Dark Souls</i></a>, I'd be stunned if the whole thing wasn't geographically correct, if each piece didn't fit together perfectly with the rest. But beyond that, it's the little details, like how each corpse throughout <i>Prey</i> is attached to a specific name that can be found in the employee directory, or that the tabletop games and nerf gun shootouts these people were involved with can be scrutinized for no other reason than to give life and substance to this fictional world. <i>Prey</i> is full of things that didn't need to be there, which is precisely why they <i>did</i> need to be there.<br />
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<b>8. <i>Future Unfolding </i>(PC)</b><br />
<b><br /></b>The most important thing I can tell you about <i>Future Unfolding</i> is that it isn't <i>Proteus</i>. I say this because it'd be awfully easy to play this game for a couple of minutes, fail to see the point, and dismiss it as one of the countless pretentious "art games" that flash colors in your face and amount to nothing if you're not on the exact wavelength as the people who made it.<br />
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The thing about <i>Future Unfolding</i> is that it tells you <i>nothing</i>. It drops you into a strange, vibrant world with a set of two verbs - dash and interact - and forces you to decode the abstract but consistent rules by which this place abides. It asks you to be curious, to observe and experiment. It asks you to be a scientist. As the world of <i>Future Unfolding</i> begins to make more sense, it'll become increasingly clear what your objectives are, and that this is very much a game with a point and purpose.<br />
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There are two famous sequences in <i>Super Metroid</i> in which players become stuck and are informed of their own capabilities to escape by observing what the local wildlife does in the same situation. While that's not <i>exactly</i> what you'll be experiencing in <i>Future Unfolding</i>, the same brand of wordless, purely visual tutorialization is on constant display within. It's not for everyone, and certainly not for those hoping the final cutscene will be any less ambiguous than the game that preceded it, but for those with the patience, it's beautiful, odd, and richly rewarding. Thanks to the folks at the <a href="https://youtu.be/6KHdwfsooyg">Computer Game Show podcast</a> for pointing me toward this overlooked gem.<br />
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<b>7. </b><b><i>Snake Pass </i>(Switch)</b><br />
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A couple of months ago on Twitter, I saw a montage image of all of this year's 3D platformers, and wondered aloud why the best of the lot, <i>Snake Pass</i>, wasn't included. A friend asked me if <i>Snake Pass </i>even qualifies as a 3D platformer, to which I replied that of <i>course</i> it does. Just because a game doesn't sport a jump mechanic doesn't mean it breaks the spirit of pushing players through acrobatic challenges for the express purpose of collecting shiny things.<br />
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If anything, <i>Snake Pass</i>'s lack of a jump function is precisely what makes it such a standout in the genre. We know how to jump. We mastered it generations ago. <i>Snake Pass </i>gives me the pleasure of mastering an entirely new mechanic, in which I must tuck, wind, and squeeze in order to maneuver a snake through obstacles which are more often than not constructed from shafts of bamboo. It's one of those games where you could watch it and think that no control scheme imaginable could give players the ability to perform such complex tasks in any intuitive way, but <i>Snake Pass</i>'s commands are simple enough to make you feel comfortable before cranking the difficulty to ludicrous levels in its final two thirds. Many won't be up for the challenge, but I devoured every second.<br />
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I also want to give <i>Snake Pass</i> credit for being one of the first quality third-party titles on the Switch, and only the second release after <i>Breath of the Wild </i>to truly win me over on the system. It was, in fact, <i>Snake Pass</i> that helped me through what would otherwise have been a torturously long wait for my car to be inspected. Great title regardless, but hey, making my life outright easier wins it a few extra points.<br />
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<b>6. <i>Torment: Tides of Numenera </i>(PC)</b><br />
<b><br /></b><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>"The 'challenge' comes from the amount of information that players are expected to process while piecing together this alien world and finding the outline of their morals. It’s a mentally taxing game – one that I endured with many cups of coffee – but as with its predecessor, it’s ultimately a puzzle worth solving... Every conversation is a new journey... It's the perfect follow-up to <span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Planescape: Torment</span>, as thought-provoking, mature and <span style="box-sizing: border-box;">challenging </span>as its predecessor. For those who like their sci-fi more than a little weird, I can’t recommend it enough."</i></span></span> (<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/torment-tides-of-numenera-review/">Review.</a>)<br />
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I'm gonna go bold here and state that <i>Torment: Tides of Numenera </i>is a better game than its spiritual predecessor, <i>Planescape: Torment</i>. Part of that is just personally preferring a sci-fi setting over a fantasy one, but I'm mainly talking about the fact that <i>Numenera</i>'s combat is both decent and completely optional. You played <i>Baldur's Gate </i>or <i>Icewind Dale</i> because you wanted to be challenged on the battlefield; you played <i>Planescape</i> because you wanted to be challenged intellectually. Bringing that front and center, and allowing players to use dialog choices to sidestep confrontation, is a natural extension of that.<br />
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That's important, because <i>Numenera</i>, even more so than other entries in the recent CRPG resurgence, <i>feels</i> like an old game. There's barely any voice acting and the menus look embarrassingly archaic. None of that particularly matters unless it creates a barrier for newcomers, but the important thing is that for as much as <i>Numenera </i>channels the games of the past, it doesn't repeat the mistakes of its influences. Instead, it's an homage that is simultaneously reaching to bizarre and thought-provoking new places.<br />
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<b>5. <i>Resident Evil 7 </i>(PC)</b><br />
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This, ladies and gentlemen, is how you do it. In an almost overachieving effort to make <i>Resident Evil </i>relevant again, Capcom has taken the core ingredients that have served the series well previously (the small, contained environments of the earlier entries; the set piece-driven pace of <i>RE4</i>), disassembled what's <i>never</i> worked and rebuilt it from scratch (the story), and injected the whole production with the look and feel of some of the most successful contemporary horror games, the ones that have proven it's possible to disempower players without constricting them to tank controls.<br />
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As I write this, I'm currently playing through some of the earlier <i>Resident Evil </i>titles starting with the remake of the first and working my way up. Though I continue to love them from a design standpoint (the way they get the most out these small, contained environments by unraveling them in a <i>Metroid</i>-like manner and constantly giving new relevance to areas you're forced to backtrack through), there's a <i>lot</i>, mechanically, that doesn't hold up about them: the confusing camera angles, the limited number of saves a player is permitted, a combat system that's borderline unworkable against faster enemies (like those <i>damn </i>dogs).<br />
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What a joy it is, then, to get a <i>Resident Evil </i>romp that channels the series' early days without being bogged down by such annoyances. The scale has been brought down considerably from the Michael Bay-sized mess that was <i>RE6</i>. The game takes place almost entirely on a single estate, but every inch of it is used effectively, in such a way that I could simply refer to "the kids' room" or "the basement" and another fan will instantly recall the segment and know what made it special and memorable. It may not be an innovator, but it's a collection of the most effective horror techniques used in video games throughout the generations, and marks everything this medium is capable of in regards to this genre. It's one of the series' absolute finest, second only to the unbeatable <i>RE4</i>. (<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/gamecritics-com-radio-episode-3-resident-evil-7/">Podcast.</a>)<br />
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<b>4. <i>Battle Chef Brigade </i>(Switch)</b><br />
<b><br /></b>Here's one of those ideas that's so unlikely to work that it circumnavigates the globe and winds up on the opposite end of the spectrum, working beautifully. You know how developers will sometimes come up with a head-to-head mechanic so ingenious that they design an entire universe in which every conflict is resolved through said mechanic, the way <i>Pokemon </i>envisioned a world in which cockfighting was the only sustainable industry? That's <i>Battle Chef Brigade</i>, in which citizens settle disputes via <i>Iron Chef</i>-esque cooking competitions.<br />
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In each match, players venture into the wild to hunt for ingredients via side-scrolling actioner segments reminiscent of George Kamitani's games (<i>Odin Sphere </i>and <i>Dragon's Crown</i>). Once they're stocked, dishes are prepared through a match-three mini-game in which ingredients manifest as blocks with multiple flavors. The weirdest thing about <i>Battle Chef Brigade </i>is how much this mechanic actually <i>does</i> feel like cooking - the acts of stirring, simmering and seasoning all have match-three stand-ins, and the game even emulates the stress of having to present dishes to multiple people at once, each in the mood for something different.<br />
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It's so good, and so completely unlike anything else I played this year, that my only criticism of <i>Battle Chef Brigade</i> is that I desperately wish it included competitive multiplayer to extend its value. The single-player campaign is both charming and hearty, but the only thing resembling an online component is the "daily cook-off," in which players compete for high scores under new parameters each day. Imagine a full-on multiplayer mode with randomized judges and theme ingredients. It'd be amazing. Then again, if my only complaint about a game is that I want to play it forever, well, that's a good position to be in.<br />
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<b>3. <i>Divinity: Original Sin II </i>(PC)</b><br />
<b><br /></b><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><i>"Original Sin II </i></span><i>left me consistently amazed not simply by the number of options, but by its ability to make every path special... Since nothing respawns, experience points are a limited quantity and everything that happens throughout the game is a unique, one-time experience... That’s how an adventure like this is as entertaining in its closing moments as it was during its earliest, and how a 125-hour game can still leave me wanting more by the time the credits roll." </i></span></span>(<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/divinity-original-sin-ii-review/">Review.</a>)<br />
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I can't really go any higher than third for this one, since its predecessor <a href="http://mikesuskie.blogspot.com/2015/01/sometimes-i-like-things-my-ten-favorite.html">was my Game of the Year back in 2014</a>, and this one's only a marginal improvement. That having been said, I've often called the first <i>Original Sin</i> the best RPG I've ever played, so for its sequel to be any kind of improvement at all is a gargantuan accomplishment. It is a <i>staggering </i>triumph for a single-player game to last me 125 hours and for not a single minute to feel wasted or redundant, for every quest to have its own quirks and memorable takeaways, for every combat scenario to be unique, for each area to be fun to explore. It's an overwhelmingly complete-feeling RPG, bolstered by its complete lack of grinding.<br />
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The only thing missing is technical stability. Review codes for <i>Original Sin II </i>(a game that ultimately took me 125 hours to complete) didn't go out to anyone until a day or so before release, not because Larian wanted to avoid critical scrutiny - this game has been bombarded with praise - but because they really needed all of the time that they could get to tighten the screws. A few more months not only would have resulted in an arguably perfect RPG, but also would have pushed the release to a less busy period. I remain the only person I know who's finished <i>Original Sin II</i>, and in fact, I know a number of people who <i>want</i> to play it but are afraid they don't have the time. All I can say is that however long it winds up taking, the journey's worth every second.<br />
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<b>2. <i>The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild </i>(Switch)</b><br />
<b><br /></b><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">"Breath of the Wild</span>’s shakeups make it feel like the series’ most substantive step forward in nearly two decades, and it’s been a long time since a <span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Zelda</span> release was such an event... Whereas too many open-world games boil down to endless waypoint-chasing because they lack the guts to truly turn players loose, <span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Breath of the Wild</span> restores a sense of discovery to a genre that should be defined by it... It embodies the vision for the series that Miyamoto and Aonuma have never been able to realize until now. It’s a game three decades in the making."</i></span></span> (<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild-review/">Review.</a>)<br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I'm sure it's an eye-roller to begin one of these things by asking, "What else needs to be said at this point?" Yet the way <i>Breath of the Wild </i>has been scooping up year-end awards - I honestly can't name a single major website that <i>hasn't</i> named this their Game of the Year - kinda makes all of the praise I want to heap upon it redundant. It reinvigorated an important but aging series. It led the charge on Nintendo's wildly successful Switch, which has since become history's fastest-selling console in North America and sported easily the most impressive first-year lineup I've ever seen. It's been <a href="http://www.gamesradar.com/were-all-talking-about-zelda-breath-of-the-wild-developers-explain-how-its-shaping-the-future-of-games/">making developers re-evaluate</a> even though it's Nintendo's first true foray into the open-world genre. <i>Breath of the Wild </i>is amazing. You know it. I know it. Everyone knows it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">All I can add is that I'm just old enough to remember when 3D graphics were a relatively new thing in the gaming world, meaning I was lucky enough to appreciate how revolutionary certain titles from the N64/PS1 era were. Though <i>Ocarina of Time </i>is often criticized by its detractors as being a formulaic entry in a franchise that itself wallows in formula, that undercuts what a pioneer it was in the use of 3D space. We've moved both forward and backward in the nearly two decades since its release - we now have (to use <i>Assassin's Creed</i> as my punching bag) the technology to render entire cities from historical periods in exquisite detail, yet it's wasted on tiresome waypoint-chasing that gives us no reason to appreciate them. So I'm thankful that the series that made me fall in love with 3D worlds has finally made me fall back in love with them.</span><br />
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<b>1. <i>Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice </i>(PC)</b><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>"It’s the rare game that has no intention of being 'entertaining' in the traditional sense. Its goal is not to exhilarate or empower us, but to baffle us, wear us down, and beat our senses in... The world doesn’t seem to abide by a consistent set of rules and Senua is often on the run from thinly-defined (but nevertheless lethal) threats... It takes guts for a game developer to <span style="box-sizing: border-box;">deliberately</span> forgo traditional entertainment value in order to make a broader point... <span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Hellblade</span> is one of the game industry’s few <span style="box-sizing: border-box;">genuine</span> dramas – a dark, uncomfortable experience that makes players suffer alongside its protagonist... One of the boldest and most important artistic endeavors games have seen in quite some time."</i></span></span> (<a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/hellblade-senuas-sacrifice-review/">Review.</a>)<br />
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By early March, I thought this contest was already a wrap. But at the end of the day, no matter how much <i>Breath of the Wild</i> re-lit its series' fire and gave developers of other open-world titles something to think about, that'll never hold the power of a game that connected with me on a level no other game has. There are a million terrible low-budget indie games on Steam that address mental illness, attempting to fill a hole that no triple-A developer really has until now. Ninja Theory aren't scrubs. They have the resources to exhaustively research their subject matter and the budget and talent to bring their world to life. They've worked with Andy Serkis - twice! - to ensure that their motion capture technology is the best in the business, recreating every nuance of Melina Juergens's performance as the title character in breathtaking detail.<br />
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And they use all of these tools at their disposal to create a world not in which we're happy to get lost in, but from which we're desperate to escape. And because of that, I want to challenge anyone reading this to play <i>Hellblade</i> the same way I did: in a single sitting. I realize that for many adult gamers, plowing through a seven- or eight-hour campaign with no intermissions isn't feasible, and for plenty more, it's undesirable. But Senua's constriction to a peril from which there is no true escape, and Ninja Theory's efforts to entrench you in her universe, won't connect completely if you're able to pull yourself away from the screen, take a long break, and reflect on what you've seen. Experience her confusion, frustration, and horror - and then see it all paid off in the most enlightening way.<br />
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<b>Most overrated: </b><i>Hollow Knight</i><br />
<b>Most underrated: </b><i>Torment: Tides of Numenera</i><br />
<b>Most overlooked: </b><i>LawBreakers</i><br />
<b>Most visually striking: </b><i>Cuphead</i><br />
<b>All-out best-looking game: </b><i>Horizon: Zero Dawn</i><br />
<b>Best story: </b><i>Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice</i><br />
<b>Best writing: </b><i>Tacoma</i><br />
<b>Best character: </b>The Red Prince (<i>Divinity: Original Sin II</i>)<br />
<b>Best original soundtrack: </b><i>What Remains of Edith Finch</i><br />
<b>Biggest surprise: </b><i>Prey</i><br />
<b>Biggest disappointment: </b><i>Yooka-Laylee</i><br />
<b>Comeback of the year: </b><i>Resident Evil 7</i><br />
<b>Most enjoyable bad game: </b><i>The Surge</i><br />
<b>Least enjoyable good game: </b><i>Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice</i><br />
<b>Best free game: </b><i>OLDTV</i><br />
<b>Game that I spent the most time with: </b><i>Divinity: Original Sin II</i><br />
<b>Game that I spent the least time with before dismissing: </b><i>TumbleSeed</i><br />
<b>Game that I most wanted to play, but didn't: </b><i>Hand of Fate 2</i><br />
<b>Game I literally own that I most wanted to play, but still haven't: </b><i>Kindergarten</i><br />
<b>Best game that I still haven't finished: </b><i>Xenoblade Chronicles 2</i><br />
<b>All-out worst game that I played: </b><i>Sundered</i><br />
<b>Best non-2017 game that I first played in 2017: </b><i>Wolfenstein: The New Order</i><br />
<b>Best remake/re-release: </b><i>Mario Kart 8 Deluxe</i><br />
<b>Most anticipated game this coming year: </b><i>Monster Hunter World</i>Susquatchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04067561426934895146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3222696689475171071.post-82395589816348874272017-07-02T03:01:00.000-07:002017-09-22T02:18:36.807-07:00Three-paragraph reviews: Prey, The Surge, NiohHi. I have a new installment of Review Shots coming up soon, but first, I wanted to dive just a bit more deeply into three games that warrant a tad more conversation. Allow me to put my opinions of these games on record.<br />
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<b><i>Prey </i>(PC)</b><br />
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I expected this game to ride the <i>Doom</i> train from last year, since that was always my image of the original (with which this reboot apparently has nothing in common). As much as I'm thirsting for more <i>Doom</i>, I'm glad Arkane didn't go that route. <i>Prey</i>'s gunplay is hardly the best thing about it, and a level-based structure would have done a disservice to all of the world details that only emerge when players are forced to look carefully. To my mind, that's the mistake that Arkane's <i>Dishonored</i> series made by focusing on linear storytelling, which the studio just isn't good at. Even the Hollywood-grade talent that they always bring on board can't elevate the listless dialog they're regularly cooking up.<br />
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<i>Prey</i> succeeds because it is a game about small details. Talos I, the space station on which <i>Prey</i> is set, will likely be the most believably-realized video game setting of the year. The game features decades of alternate history backing this place up, and its layout is arranged in such a way that it could easily function as both a living and working space. The station's hundreds of employees are all in the game and accounted for, and countless email conversations and bits of environmental storytelling build a world that didn't just start existing when we arrived there. The entire exterior of Talos I can even be freely explored; if someone were to collect the game's collision data and assemble it all into an interactive 3D map, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyTB5vhKGSI">as was done with <i>Dark Souls</i></a>, I'd be surprised if there was any geographical cheating involved. It's that convincing.<br />
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What it amounts to is a <i>BioShock</i> clone that's better than <i>BioShock </i>- deeper, richer, more open to experimentation (in both navigation and combat), and with moral choices displaying shades of grey. It runs 25-30 hours and could easily have lasted me far longer. In fact, my only real issue with <i>Prey</i>, though it is a major one, is the rushed and underwhelming manor in which it concludes, hurrying through a high-stakes finale for a final twist that severely undercuts the complexity of the game's world-building. That sour final note dampened my enthusiasm, but nevertheless, this is one of 2017's mot\re pleasant surprises so far. <b>8/10</b><br />
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<b><i>The Surge </i>(PC)</b><br />
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I'd like to be constructive about this one. <i>Lords of the Fallen</i> released when we were still regularly getting new <i>Souls</i> games, and as such, there was little room for a surface-level mimicry that utterly lacked the depth and finesse of the series that inspired it. But now that From Software is taking a break from these sorts of games, I expect more developers to take up the mantle and cater to this niche. Deck13 Interactive has made another attempt, and while it's not <i>great</i>, it's a step in the right direction and, I mean, hey, now we know that they're really serious about this, so I'd honestly like to see them continue to fine-tune their take on the formula.<br />
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<i>The Surge</i> offers two major improvements over <i>Lords</i>. The first is that the combat is not only functional (i.e. what you expect to happen actually does, and collision doesn't suck) but actually offers its own new twist - players can use the right stick to target individual body parts, either to deal more damage to unprotected areas or to harvest pieces of armor. It's a neat hook that works well. Secondly, rather than just flatly copy the <i>Souls</i> series' dark fantasy aesthetic, Deck13 sets this one in an industrial future that looks more than a little similar to Neill Blomkamp's films (specifically <i>Elysium</i>, to which there is an unsubtle reference). So it's the rare <i>Souls</i> clone that doesn't feel like a straight rip-off.<br />
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They still got a few things wrong, however. The final third of the game feels incredibly unbalanced - the last two bosses are beyond tedious, and the concluding level is full of enemies who don't seem to abide by the same rules regarding stamina that players do. Objectives are also unclear sometimes. While that's a characteristic of <i>Dark Souls</i>, it's a poor fit for <i>The Surge</i>'s world design, in which backtracking isn't particularly intuitive. Finally, the story is terrible, despite some clear attempts at political commentary regarding corporate greed. So keep tightening your screws, Deck13, and hire some real writers, and your next release might be a real winner. For <i>Souls</i> fans seeking a fix, eh, this one's worth checking out when the price drops. <b>6/10</b><br />
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<b><i>Nioh </i>(PS4)</b><br />
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While I've never been a fan of Team Ninja, they're a major and experienced developer, and the first AAA studio, to my knowledge, to attempt a <i>Souls</i> clone of their own. <i>Nioh</i> has the polish and the sheen to drastically outdo <i>The Surge</i> in the presentation department, and the core combat feels excellent. It's also one of the rare console games to offer a 60fps option at the cost of some slight graphical fidelity, which a framerate junkie like myself appreciates. All good first impressions, and yet I ultimately walked away believing <i>The Surge</i> to be the superior game. How can that be?<br />
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Well, for one, Team Ninja seems to believe that the combat alone made <i>Souls</i> great, and ignored that series' penchant for rich lore and intricate world design. <i>Nioh</i>'s plot is drab nonsense. Its setting apparently has basis in Japanese history, and most of its characters are actual figures from the 17th century, but Team Ninja makes little effort to fill in the details for Western players who aren't as knowledgeable on the subject. <i>Nioh</i> is also level-based, meaning the labyrinthine structure of the <i>Souls</i> series is lost. The visual style looks interchangeable from Koei Tecmo's other big franchises (particularly <i>Toukiden</i>), and the levels, mostly quaint Japanese villages and forests, run together after a while. And the majority of the game is just too damn dark, set mostly at night despite no element of horror. Sunlight is a thing, Team Ninja.<br />
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These aren't inherently major flaws, but I need <i>something</i>, some unique hook. <i>Nioh </i>presents no substantial new ideas, while its annoyances pile up. In particular, while the game's stamina system works well at a glance, certain bosses and powerful enemies are given way too much of it, leading to battles where I have to constantly stop for breaks when my opponent doesn't. It completely throws the balance off, and had my friend and editor Brad Gallaway not alerted me to a slow that drastically slows enemy movement, I might have lost patience. For 50 hours it drags on, with uninteresting levels, only a handful of standard enemies and nothing in the narrative department to keep me engaged. I don't know who I'd recommend this to outside of loot fanatics. <b>5/10</b>Susquatchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04067561426934895146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3222696689475171071.post-9610970088194692172017-05-05T02:43:00.000-07:002017-05-05T02:43:25.576-07:00A single-paragraph review of Outlast 2, followed by a longer, spoiler-laden one<i>Outlast 2</i> is scary, so much so that when my father stayed overnight last week just after the game's release, I had to actually keep myself from playing it because I was worried that my screams would wake him up. So if your measure of a horror game's quality it how terrifying it is, <i>Outlast 2</i> is a rousing success, though it comes with two caveats. Firstly, it's schlocky, over-the-top, and utterly unconcerned with whether or not it's offending you. It seems determined to figure out what it is that makes you lightheaded, and impressively, in my case, it was successful. Secondly, the state of stealth-based "defenseless" horror games has progressed over the last few years, and so an <i>Outlast</i> sequel of level quality is not necessarily an equal. <b>7/10, and I recommend it if you have the stomach for it.</b><br />
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And now, since I stand to make zero profit from this review and don't need to justify a score that will wind up on Metacritic, I'm now going to discuss <i>Outlast 2 </i>in more explicit detail, so be warned: <span style="color: #cc0000;"><b>spoilers beyond this point.</b></span><br />
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The original <i>Outlast</i> came along at the perfect time for me. An indie release called <i>Amnesia: The Dark Descent</i> had been bouncing around for several years and laying the groundwork for what I call the defenseless horror genre, in which players are matched against enemies that they can't kill and thus spend most of their playtime running and hiding. It's a pure and effective method of generating panic, but while I've enjoyed <i>Amnesia</i>'s influence, I always found its actual design too obtuse. I'd longed for a game to strip the concept down to its bare essentials, unimpaired by the ambition of being something more complex than it needed to be.<br />
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<i>Outlast</i>, for me, was that game. Simple, straightforward, serving no purpose but to make you feel helpless in an insane asylum full of grotesque things that want to mutilate you. It was so scary that I could only play it in short bursts. That it arrived just as the AAA horror scene was burning out (with heavy-hitters like <i>Dead Space 3</i> and <i>Resident Evil 6</i> abandoning all pretense of actually scaring people) was a bonus, and the genre's been on an upswing since.<br />
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So where else have we seen this? Well, after <i>Aliens: Colonial Marines</i> became one of the most notorious disappointments of the modern era, Sega gave the makers of the <i>Total War</i> series the opportunity to channel the original <i>Alien</i> film and base an entire game around evading a single, unkillable xenomorph, and the resulting <i>Alien: Isolation</i> is one of the best uses of that license ever (bloated and overlong as it may be). Meanwhile, <i>P.T. </i>made such an impression that it's regarded as a contemporary classic even though it's technically just a demo for a cancelled game, and Capcom took some obvious cues in rebooting <i>Resident Evil</i>, an experiment that worked shockingly well earlier this year.<br />
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So where does that leave an <i>Outlast</i> sequel? Well, disappointingly, developer Red Barrels' answer seems to be "make it more disgusting." I don't want to undercut the many ways in which <i>Outlast 2</i> is an effective horror game, but the torture porn element has somehow been cranked up even higher than that of its predecessor, as if Red Barrels knew that only the most thick-shelled of gamers would demand <i>more</i> of what they got the first time and set out to find everyone's "trigger." If there is <i>anything</i> that makes your stomach turn, and it's not represented in <i>Outlast 2</i>, don't tell Red Barrels. They'll be disappointed in themselves.<br />
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Here's mine. I went to a Catholic school (like this game's main character, and we'll get to that), and as I'm sure you know, Christians are obsessed with crucifixion. Whenever I had to endure a gruesome explanation as to what a person goes through when they're crucified, I got lightheaded. Lo and behold, there is a scene in which the protagonist of <i>Outlast 2</i> is nailed to a cross. The unbroken first-person perspective forced me to imagine, more so than I ever had before, what it felt like for the person that this was happening to. It's one of the most brutal things I've ever witnessed in a work of fiction. I'm... kind of impressed.<br />
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But for as rampant and gratuitous as <i>Outlast 2</i>'s violence is, it's ultimately a game about avoiding having such violence inflicted upon you. Again, this formula works, and I daresay that for as commonplace as low-budget indie horror titles are, this sort of genre benefits, more than most, from high production values. I want to jump every time a shadow dances in front of me. I want to hear ambient sound effects to my sides that <i>could</i> be approaching enemies. I want to be immersed. <i>Outlast 2</i> looks and sounds great. It's an absorbing experience, one that had me nervous while playing it and feeling like I needed a shower afterwards.<br />
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Again, though, we've seen this all before, and the supercharged schlock factor is something that I imagine will shoo more people away than it will lure in. One particular disappointment is that <i>Outlast 2</i> still feels narrow and linear despite the switch to an outdoor environment. I get that claustrophobia is key in games like this, but <i>Outlast </i>is a stealth franchise, and it often feels like you don't have enough room to maneuver through enemy routes. And when you're caught, the areas are so small that there's often nowhere to go. In some situations, if an enemy spots you, that's it.<br />
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The one <i>incredible</i> exception is a sequence set in a large, open cornfield, where vision is limited on both sides, and while there are plenty of places to run and hide, doing so could ultimately screw up your sense of direction. It's a brilliant moment, and <i>Outlast 2</i> could have used more of them.<br />
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But the game's real missed opportunity is the plot, on multiple levels. Only tangentially connected to the first game, <i>Outlast 2</i> is about a pair of married journalists who find themselves stranded somewhere in rural Arizona where a crazy Catholic cult wants to... well, they're split into factions and everyone seems to have a different goal. The preacher running the main village seems to believe that the wife is pregnant with the Antichrist, a dwarf out in the woods is reenacting the Stations of the Cross (hence the crucifixion scene), and some weird pagan lady, uh, wants to take off her clothes, smear herself in mud, and chase the protagonist around an old mine?<br />
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I'll be honest: When I finished <i>Outlast 2</i>, I hadn't the slightest idea what the game was actually about, what I'd just witnessed. It was only after, reading a synopsis, when I learned that a single hidden document (one of dozens in the game) reveals a key plot detail: that the enormous burst of light you keep seeing throughout the game is an experimental mind-control device, run by the same company responsible for the wrongdoing in the first <i>Outlast</i>.<br />
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So that's it, really. A machine is turning everyone in the area violently insane by convincing them that they're living in the biblical end times. This eventually applies to the protagonist himself, whose hallucinations more and more take center stage as the search for his wife continues, culminating in a trippy-ass final act in which he appears to completely lose his grip on reality. There's some striking imagery late in <i>Outlast 2 </i>- apocalyptic lightning storms, blood raining down from the sky - but the game's lack of a message or a point discourages discussion on what's real. Did the wife really birth a child? Is she actually dead? Did the cult really commit mass suicide? I can't work up the energy to stew over these questions if no one in this story seems to have a clear-cut arc either way.<br />
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That's the other thing: <i>Outlast 2 </i>dumps a lot of time into character-building and symbolism that never, to my view, pays off. The game doesn't really explore Catholicism on any thematic level - it's all just window dressing - and the <i>constant</i> flashbacks to a tragic incident from the hero's childhood are both repetitive and needless. We're never given a clear answer as to what exactly happened (if a priest accidentally killed the girl, why are we also constantly seeing images of her hanging from a noose?), nor is there any clear connection between the flashbacks and the present-day stuff. And even if there's a point that I'm missing, these sequences didn't need to be nearly as frequent, bloating a game that's longer than it should have been.<br />
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And that's my final criticism of <i>Outlast 2</i>, that it overstays its welcome. Horror games, by and large, benefit from brevity - the moment this becomes routine, it stops being scary. In addition to the school flashbacks, the game's last hour or two could have been trimmed significantly, as there comes a point when the developers don't have anything new to show me but nevertheless drag things out in a repetitious series of underground tunnels. Again, <i>P.T. </i>is widely regarded as a horror masterpiece and it lasts, what, 20 minutes?<br />
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But this is all just a way of saying that <i>Outlast 2</i> is neither as tight or as relevant as its predecessor. Yet that game made such an impression on me that its sequel can afford to be several steps down. If you want a reliable scare fix, wait for the sun to go down, turn off the lights, put on a pair of headphones, and play some <i>Outlast 2</i>. For whatever the game gets wrong, it does what I paid it to do.<br />
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(P.S. One final observation. <i>Outlast 2</i> features a miniature rogues gallery of distinctive villains. We want to see them get their comeuppance, of course, but since this is a game in which you can't attack, they all just sort of... accidentally off themselves in increasingly <i>Tucker & Dale</i>-esque ways. Not really a complaint, just amusing in hindsight.)<br />
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(P.S.S. The gravelly-voice pickaxe lady dies in precisely the same manner as Father Brennan from <i>The Omen</i>.)Susquatchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04067561426934895146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3222696689475171071.post-54433084013007551922017-04-23T20:31:00.000-07:002017-04-23T20:35:42.068-07:00Why 30 minutes of Nier: Automata was enough for me<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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After sitting in a GameFly envelope for something like a month while I polished off <i>Zelda</i>, <i>Mass Effect</i> and <i>Horizon</i>, I finally gave <i>Nier: Automata</i> a spin last night, eager to learn whether or not the civil unrest over <a href="https://gamecritics.com/brad-gallaway/nier-automata-review/">my editor Brad's unenthusiastic review of the game</a> was justified. My reaction to the original <i>Nier</i> was mixed (to put it charitably), but reactions to its follow-up have been far more universally positive, and the involvement of PlatinumGames always fills me with hope, <i>Star Fox Zero</i> notwithstanding.<br />
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I will now walk you through my experience.<br />
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I boot <i>Nier: Automata</i> up and the first thing it tells me is that the game doesn't have an autosave function. Okay. Hopefully that won't be an issue.<br />
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The game opens with a straight-up vertically-scrolling shmup sequence as my character pilots a jet. Okay, fine. The original <i>Nier</i> drew a lot of influence from bullet hell shooters so it's fine that the sequel is being more direct about it. This sequence switches perspectives rapidly - one minute it's scrolling vertically, then it's horizontal, then the camera is stationed behind my craft, then I transform into a mech and can fire in any direction with the right stick. This is all fine.<br />
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This is a <i>very</i> grey game, at least based on this opening level and every damn screenshot I've seen of it. It's particularly bad timing that <i>Automata</i> should be released so soon after <i>Zelda </i>and <i>Horizon</i>, two games which taught us that robot-infested post-apocalypses can be lush and vibrant. There's some talk about the "Old World" and I've had enough of this sort of thing lately.<br />
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My character begins fighting on foot. The game is still switching perspectives a lot, and it's all very high-energy, but <i>man</i> is this some shallow, bog-standard character-action-game combat. Your quick attacks, your strong attacks, your dodge move, your pea shooter ranged attack with unlimited ammo. I remember the combat in the original <i>Nier</i> being just as dull, but I'd hoped Platinum would expand upon it, since this is the one thing they consistently do well. Alas, it is not to be.<br />
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So I spend quite some time wandering through bland industrial environments, hacking through what must be at least a hundred samey robots, all while my character tells her partner that emotions are forbidden. This game doesn't have a lot of personality so far, but there's a brief mini-boss against a giant buzzsaw arm that's moderately entertaining. Later, I have fight two of them at once, and my character clips through one of the buzzsaws, gets stuck inside, and dies horribly.<br />
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Then I remember that the game doesn't have an autosave function, and learn from a few Twitter friends that you have to complete this lengthy intro without dying, which is tough to do when you can just clip inside a mini-boss and die with no chance to recover. The game gives me a fake-out ending, which makes me wonder if my death was staged and the game's pulling a meta-trick on me, but nope - I'm back at the very start and have to slog through that whole dull opening level again.<br />
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Except I don't want to. One of the controversial features of the <i>Nier</i> games is that they must be completed multiple times to unlock all of the story content. I don't see the appeal of that, and it's something that's made me hesitant to jump into <i>Automata</i>. And here I am, struggling to work up the energy to replay just a single 30-minute chunk of the game. How will I later justify replaying the entire thing, or at least substantial pieces of it?<br />
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I won't. Not on the tail of so many other massive games that took hold of me far more readily than this one did, not when major new releases are happening at such a rapid-fire rate that I can't afford a time sink that isn't meeting me halfway, not when I still have yet to touch <i>Yakuza 0 </i>or <i>Persona 5</i>, not when I've still got plenty of <i>Nioh</i> left. As a critic, I have no obligation to play <i>Automata</i>, so I can only approach it as a game-loving adult with limited free time who must determine, in a busy release season, which games just aren't clicking for him. <i>Automata</i> is going back to GameFly and that's the end of that.Susquatchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04067561426934895146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3222696689475171071.post-25569918869201512932017-04-22T20:32:00.000-07:002017-04-22T23:47:31.729-07:00Review Shots: April 22, 2017<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
So that was a hectic month or two, huh? I imagine most of us still aren't out of the wild yet, in fact. I myself still have a ways to go in <i>Horizon: Zero Dawn </i>(I still can't get a clear answer on whether a colon belongs in that title or not), <i>Yooka-Laylee </i>just came out a couple of days ago, and my GameFly copy of <i>Nier: Automata</i> is still sitting next to my TV, untouched. It's a good thing I'm not into <i>Persona</i> or this would still be full-on busy season.</div>
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But the release schedule is about to cool down considerably, which gives me time not only to catch up on the games I haven't had the chance to release yet, but to do some short write-ups on all of the releases I've played but haven't been able to discuss in detail. So, it's time for another round of Review Shots, a set of rapid-fire takes on whatever I haven't reviewed elsewhere. And since my shiny new Switch has dominated my attention over the last month, this installment will be largely devoted to what I've been up to on that thing.</div>
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P.S. I wrote this intro a while ago, so as of the time I've posted this, I've finished <i>Horizon</i>, <i>Yooka-Laylee</i> has been out for a couple of weeks, and I've dipped into <i>Nier: Automata </i>and determined that it's not my thing.</div>
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<b><i>The Witcher 3: Hearts of Stone </i>(PC)</b></div>
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January was when I finally mustered up the courage to return to <i>The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt</i>, and sure enough, as soon as I'd gotten back into the game's rhythm, I couldn't get enough. I'm still working my way through the game's second DLC, but <i>Hearts of Stone</i> ranks as perhaps the best self-contained story in a game full of great self-contained stories. This thing is a cavalcade of good characterization - Shani is a great romantic match for Geralt (and his, erm, "other side"), the often-despicable Olgierd's dip into immortality makes him bizarrely humble and sympathetic, and Gaunter O'Dimm is easily the series' greatest villain yet, a fearsome and mysterious force. Two of the dungeons late in this quest (one set in a painting, the other in a riddle) are a bit of a chore and an obvious attempt to get players more involved in what is largely a hand-off piece of storytelling, but this is a worthwhile addition to a base game that wasn't exactly skimpy on great content to begin with. <b>8/10</b></div>
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<b><i>Resident Evil 7 </i>(PC)</b><br />
<b><br /></b>This is several months old now, and although I never formally reviewed it, Dan and I did <a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/gamecritics-com-radio-episode-3-resident-evil-7/">rave about it for an hour and a half</a> on my first and likely only stab at hosting the GameCritics podcast. Still, since this'll get serious consideration on my best-of-2017 list far down the line, I want to put it into writing that <i>Resident Evil 7</i> acknowledges the ill-fatedness of Capcom's attempts to recreate <i>RE4</i>'s magic, and therefore turns <i>Resident Evil</i> into a horror franchise once again, disempowering the player and scaling the setting almost entirely to a single estate. It's <i>almost</i> a return to form, except it's smarter, scarier, and more fluid than the originals ever were, and it tells perhaps the first story in series history that can actually be taken somewhat seriously (though the protagonist is admittedly a bit of an emotional vacuum). After <i>Resident Evil 6</i>, I would've been ready to call it a day on this franchise, but Capcom really turned this thing all the way around. Buy it if you've got the stomach for it. <b>9/10</b><br />
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<i style="font-weight: bold;">Super Bomberman R </i><span style="font-weight: bold;">(</span><span style="font-weight: bold;">Switch)</span><br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span>There is absolutely no circumstance in which a new <i>Bomberman</i> game, in 2017, should cost $50, no matter how long it's been since we've played a proper <i>Bomberman</i> title, no matter how eager we are to wash the taste of <i>Act Zero</i> out of our mouths, no matter how much we're itching to make use of our pricey new Switch consoles. At its absolute best, <i>Super Bomberman R </i>is a repackaging of the same formula that's seen, what, 33 iterations? The trouble is that it's often <i>not</i> at its absolute best - the single-player campaign is pointless (despite the cute animated cutscenes), and at least half of the online matches I've played have been so laggy as to make the game nearly unplayable. (Both <i>Splatoon 2 </i>and <i>Fast RMX</i> have had perfectly adequate online functionality, so the problem is with the game, not the service.) Were this a bargain-price eShop download, I'd still be hesitant to recommend it. At $50, well... I can't say I expect better from Konami. <b>3/10</b><br />
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<b><i>Blaster Master Zero </i>(Switch)</b><br />
<b><br /></b>As a fan of the original <i>Blaster Master</i> (though not enough of one to have known that there were several other follow-ups before this one), I expected to like this more than I did. It's certainly faithful to the series formula, which mixes side-scrolling, exploration-based action-platforming in a tank with top-down linear bits on foot. Weirdly, my biggest issue with <i>Blaster Master Zero</i> has more to do with the Switch hardware - specifically, the left Joycon's lack of a true d-pad, which makes retro-style 2D games such as this one rather awkward to control. Maybe this is something I'll grow used to as I spend more time with my Switch in handheld mode and <i>Zero</i> was unfortunate enough to be the first guinea pig. Also, while the tank segments are fun, the top-down sections feel way less inspired, and that's unfortunately where the bosses tend to be set. It captures the look and feel of the NES classic, but I guess I wasn't as hungry for this as I'd imagined, and it's probably the Switch release I've spent the least time with. <b>6/10</b><br />
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<b><i>VOEZ </i>(Switch)</b><br />
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Even amongst Switch's thin launch period lineup, <i>VOEZ</i> is already shaping up to be one of the console's most overlooked titles. I only picked it up (a) out of desire to get more use out of my Switch now that <i>Zelda</i>'s been shelved and (b) because my embarrassing attachment to the <i>Hatsune Miku</i> titles means Japanese rhythm games may actually be my thing. <i>VOEZ </i>was a good investment - its presentation is both attractive and minimalistic, and its song selection exceeds a hundred, all of them available right from the start. Mechanically, it's nothing terribly unique, but I like that it forces you to play with two hands at once, mimicking the sort of multitasking required to, say, play the piano (something I've always been in awe of). Plenty of variety in the music, as well - it's not just J-pop, but also violent rave electro and some delicate symphonic tracks. It's a mobile port, but don't let that scare you away - <i>VOEZ</i> is worth buying if you're into this sort of thing. <b>8/10</b><br />
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<b><i>Dark Souls III: The Ringed City</i> (PC)</b><br />
<b><br /></b>A year ago, I was still fully on board the <i>Souls</i> train, confident that From Software could keep it running forever, yet these final two DLCs, purportedly the last <i>Souls</i>-related content we'll be getting for the foreseeable future, have done a lot to sour my good will toward the franchise. This one is marginally better than <i>Ashes of Ariandel</i>, mainly for its visual appeal, but way too much of its challenge is derived from having players jump from cover to cover while invincible enemies fire projectiles on a strict timer. It reminds me of the bits in <i>Demon's Souls</i> where you had to dodge dragon breath, and I hated those sections. The bosses are decent on paper but have way too much health, a lazy method of inflating the game's difficulty, and it's a twist of the blade that this DLC's story ultimately links back to Ariandel when I'd rather have just forgotten about that whole affair. A huge disappointment as the swan song of <i>Dark Souls</i>, and if Miyazaki and crew are really this out of good ideas, maybe it's time for a break after all. <b>5/10</b><br />
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<b><i>Snake Pass</i> (Switch)</b><br />
<b><br /></b>This is one of the most unique 3D platformers I've ever played, and has stolen an awful lot of <i>Yooka-Laylee</i>'s thunder, if you ask me. Since you control a snake, the objective is to navigate levels not by jumping, but by contorting your body, looping around objects and creating a tight enough grip that you don't fall. The controls are a major adjustment but super consistent once you grasp when to raise or lower the snake's head, or when to tighten or loosen your grip. Some of the acrobatic stunts the later levels ask you to complete are pretty grueling, but only a handful of <i>Snake Pass</i>'s collectibles are mandatory; the rest are there if you're looking for an extra challenge, as I was, enamored with the game's charm and originality. The camera is an occasional nuisance, especially since your right thumb won't always been free to move it around, but otherwise, this is one of my surprise favorites of the year. <b>9/10</b><br />
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And now, for some <i>actual</i> reviews:<br />
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<i><a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/diluvion-review/">Diluvion</a></i><br />
<i><a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/for-honor-review/">For Honor</a></i><br />
<i><a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/hollow-knight-review/">Hollow Knight</a></i><br />
<i><a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild-review/">The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild</a></i><br />
<i><a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/mass-effect-andromeda-review/">Mass Effect: Andromeda</a></i><br />
<i><a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/torment-tides-of-numenera-review/">Torment: Tides of Numenera</a></i><br />
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And hey! I was on <a href="https://gamecritics.com/tim-spaeth/gamecritics-com-radio-episode-5-the-switch-and-zelda/">the latest GameCritics podcast</a>, in which we discussed the Switch and <i>Zelda</i>.Susquatchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04067561426934895146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3222696689475171071.post-2649413343948805682017-03-25T03:02:00.001-07:002017-03-25T04:57:23.856-07:00A scoreless review of Fast RMX<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It is easy, relatively speaking, to make a racing game look good and run well. Most of the scenery is far out of reach, players can't study it anyway because they're moving too quickly and focusing on the road, and not much is actually happening - it's just happening <i>very quickly</i>. The flash factor is why a good launch lineup usually includes a racer. When PlayStation 4 and Xbox One both went on sale several years ago, <i>Forza Motorsport 5</i> was the prettiest title across both platforms, and briefly fooled me into thinking that the Xbox One had a bright future ahead of it. Oh, the naivete.<br />
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So while <i>Zelda</i> is certainly a stunner on the tiny Switch, the most immediate demonstration of the tablet-sized console's power to produce big boy visuals is unquestionably <i>Fast RMX</i>. On a TV, running in full 1080p, it looks comparable to your average budget-level current-gen release. In handheld mode, though, this thing dazzles. It runs at a rock-solid 60fps while the Switch's brilliantly bright screen showcases its wonderful color palette. Again, it's largely due to the genre, and I wouldn't go about expecting <i>every</i> Switch game to look this good - I mean, <i>Zelda</i> often struggles to hold 30fps - but man oh man is <i>Fast RMX</i> gorgeous.<br />
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It's a remastered version of <i>Fast Racing Neo</i>, a Wii U release that several people recommended to me last year when <i>Redout</i> reinvigorated my interest in futuristic, ant-gravity racing games. (I'll come back to <i>Redout</i> later. It's important.) This edition packs an impressive 30 tracks and is available on Nintendo's eShop for $20.<br />
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If that sounds like a suspiciously good deal for a blazing technical showcase with a generous heap of content, know that at its core, <i>Fast RMX</i> is a relatively basic affair. It's arcade fluff, which isn't necessarily a bad thing - in fact, its compatibility for short play sessions makes it an ideal fit for the Switch's handheld mode. But <i>Fast RMX</i> is mechanically shallow and short on variety. It's a budget release; don't go in expecting more.<br />
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When assessing an AR racer, the question inevitably comes up: Which of the two big genre staples - you know the ones - does it more closely compare to? <i>Fast RMX</i> cleanly falls into the <i>F-Zero</i> camp, borrowing both its overwhelming sense of speed and its dated-even-in-the-'90s hair-metal cheesiness (complete with an announcer who says things like, "Totally awesome!"). It's particularly at home on Nintendo consoles, where the absence of an actual new <i>F-Zero</i> game grows increasingly frustrating by the year. It's been over a decade now.<br />
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<i>Fast RMX</i>'s one unique mechanic is an <i>Ikaruga</i>-like color polarity system, where players must alternate between orange and blue to take advantage of boost pads and jumps. If you touch an orange boost and you're blue, it'll actually slow you down. Likewise, hitting a jump pad of the wrong color will just send you tumbling downward. It's not a bad idea.<br />
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Unfortunately, there's little else to <i>Fast RMX </i>on a mechanical level. Sliding has virtually no use, and beyond that, it's simply a matter of pointing your craft in the right direction and hitting the gas. If you're wondering what else I could possibly want out of a racing game, well, put that question on hold for just a few more paragraphs.<br />
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<i>Fast RMX</i> is also skimpy on modes. There are bog-standard tournaments with three difficulty settings, as well as something called Hero Mode, in which vehicles can actually take damage and death means game over. Good concept in theory, but it's hurt by the game's camera, which is positioned so low that it's often difficult to see incoming obstacles. And since crashing into something can mean instant death, well, you can see how it gets frustrating. The camera also has this habit of sometimes - not always, but <i>sometimes</i> - staying level with the ground even when your vehicle hits a steep bank. It's weird and uncomfortable, and when playing in handheld mode, I was often involuntarily tilting my Switch to try to compensate for it.<br />
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So it's... fine, I guess. It's a functionally bare-bones AR racer that somehow manages to get camera control wrong, but it's gorgeous, good in small bursts, and sports enough track variety to not be a waste of time. I think $20 is a fair price, especially now, when we're desperate to make the most of our shiny new Switches and so little else is available for the system (though I'd sooner recommend <i>VOEZ</i>, a lovely little J-pop rhythm game that I've been enjoying considerably lately).<br />
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But! Remember <i>Redout</i>, that game that recently reinvigorated my interest in this genre? It's currently exclusive to PC, where it doesn't seem to have much of an audience (hence why I'm probably the only person you'll presently hear raving about the game). As luck would have it, though, later this year, <i>Redout</i> will be making its console debut... on the Switch.<br />
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Which raises the question: Can I recommend the average but affordable <i>Fast RMX</i> when a far superior AR racer is right around the corner? I guess that's up to you. My <a href="https://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/redout-review/"><i>Redout </i>review</a> from last year can hopefully fill you in on why I consider it to be the top of its class. Maybe timing will be a factor. Maybe it'll come down to price, since <i>Redout</i> will cost twice as much. I say it's worth the wait and the price, but perhaps Switch fans aren't as picky as I am. Or maybe, Nintendo fans as they are, they're just starved for something to fill the <i>F-Zero</i>-shaped hole in their lives. <i>Fast RMX</i> does a solid enough job of that.<br />
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(P.S. <i>Fast RMX </i>makes pretty neat use of the Joycon's "HD rumble" function as your craft interacts with the environment. On a desert track, for example, passing through a whirlwind actually causes a sort of spinning sensation to ripple through the controllers.)Susquatchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04067561426934895146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3222696689475171071.post-57009274117332681142017-02-26T04:23:00.000-08:002017-02-26T21:20:34.631-08:00Let's predict the Oscars or whatever<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #cc0000;"><strike><b>Best Picture:</b> <i>La La Land</i></strike></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Best Director:</b> Damien Chazelle (<i>La La Land</i>)</span><span style="line-height: 22.4px;"><br /></span></span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #cc0000; line-height: 22.4px;"><strike><b>Best Actor: </b>Denzel Washington (<i>Fences</i>)</strike></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #38761d; line-height: 22.4px;"><b>Best Actress: </b>Emma Stone (<i>La La Land</i>)</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #38761d; line-height: 22.4px;"><b>Best Supporting Actor: </b>Mahershala Ali (<i>Moonlight</i>)</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #38761d; line-height: 22.4px;"><b>Best Supporting Actress: </b>Viola Davis (<i>Fences</i>)</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #38761d; line-height: 22.4px;"><b>Best Adapted Screenplay: </b><i>Moonlight</i></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #38761d; line-height: 22.4px;"><b>Best Original Screenplay: </b><i>Manchester by the Sea</i></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 22.4px;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Best Animated Feature: </b><i>Zootopia</i></span><i><br /></i></span></span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #38761d; line-height: 22.4px;"><b>Best Documentary Feature: </b><i>OJ: Made in America</i></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #38761d; line-height: 22.4px;"><b>Best Foreign Language Film: </b><i>The Salesman</i></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #38761d; line-height: 22.4px;"><b>Best Cinematography: </b><i>La La Land</i></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #cc0000; line-height: 22.4px;"><strike><b>Best Costume Design:</b> <i>Jackie</i></strike></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #38761d; line-height: 22.4px;"><b>Best Documentary Short Subject: </b><i>The White Helmets</i></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #cc0000; line-height: 22.4px;"><strike><b>Best Film Editing: </b><i>La La Land</i></strike></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #cc0000; line-height: 22.4px;"><strike><b>Best Makeup and Hairstyling: </b><i>Star Trek Beyond</i></strike></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #38761d; line-height: 22.4px;"><b>Best Original Score: </b><i>La La Land</i></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #38761d; line-height: 22.4px;"><b>Best Original Song: </b>"City of Stars" (<i>La La Land</i>)</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #38761d; line-height: 22.4px;"><b>Best Production Design: </b><i>La La Land</i></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #38761d; line-height: 22.4px;"><b>Best Animated Short Film: </b><i>Piper</i></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #38761d; line-height: 22.4px;"><b>Best Live Action Short Film: </b><i>Sing</i></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #cc0000; line-height: 22.4px;"><strike><b>Best Sound Editing: </b><i>Hacksaw Ridge</i></strike></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #cc0000; line-height: 22.4px;"><strike><b>Best Sound Mixing: </b><i>La La Land</i></strike></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #38761d; line-height: 22.4px;"><b>Best Visual Effects: </b><i>The Jungle Book</i></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 22.4px;"><i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></i></span>
<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 22.4px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Some stray notes:</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 22.4px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 22.4px;">• Best Actor is a close race between Casey Affleck and Denzel Washington. Affleck deserves it - his performance was more understated, and Denzel's already won twice before - but I already have <i>Manchester by the Sea</i> beating out <i>La La Land</i> for writing and I'm trying to minimize my disappointment, so I'm putting Denzel.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: white;">• I don't have <i>Arrival </i>winning anything and that sucks. It at <i>least</i> deserves to win Sound Editing, but that one tends to favor war movies. It's also more deserving of Editing than <i>La La Land</i>, but that movie's gonna win just about everything, so what can you do?</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white;">• Sound Mixing always favors musicals. As many have pointed out, the sound mix was one of the few universal complaints about <i>La La Land</i>, so it's dumb that it's going to win this category, but here we are.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white;">• Also, am I crazy, or was "City of Stars" not that great?</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white;">• <i>Suicide Squad </i>is up for Makeup and Hairstyling. The makeup was one of the few aspects of that movie that didn't suck, but I'm putting down <i>Star Trek Beyond</i> because I can't bear the thought of <i>Suicide Squad</i> winning an Oscar. Plus, <i>Star Trek </i>2009 won this category.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white;">• I could see <i>Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them </i>pulling an upset in either Production Design or Costume Design.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white;">• I liked <i>La La Land</i> just fine, but jeez.</span>Susquatchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04067561426934895146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3222696689475171071.post-9629476015569453742017-01-03T18:47:00.001-08:002017-01-08T19:34:35.857-08:00The EssentialsLast night on Twitter, I asked a question: What games would you consider <em>essential </em>- required reading, if you will - for anyone who wishes to be an expert in the medium?
<br />
<br />
It started as a personal project for me. While I do a solid job of keeping up with big, important releases nowadays, there were <em>decades</em> when I didn't have the capacity to do that - particularly before 1990, when I was, uh, born. Since I write about video games on a regular basis, and since I seek opportunities to become more knowledgeable on the subject, I'm looking to gradually fill the gaps and catch up on all of the games throughout history that I feel it's my duty to be familiar with. If there were such a thing as a video game historian, what games would they <em>need</em> to play, to know about?<br />
<br />
In just the last few years, I played through <em>Final Fantasy X</em>, <em>Silent Hill 2</em> and <em>Ico</em> for the first time. Even if I hadn't wound up enjoying and respecting all three games, I'd welcome my expanded knowledge on some of the industry's most notable releases. Almost anyone would label those three games as must-plays. I missed them the first time, but I've finally rectified that.<br />
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I'm looking to do that with everything else, hence why I turned to Twitter for suggestions. But since I'm limited to 140 characters there, I didn't have the space to lay out exactly the sorts of games I'm looking for. I've come up with five categories.<br />
<br />
<strong>1. Pioneers.</strong> These are the games that changed the industry, that made it what it is today. Games that innovated, opened new doors, left their marks on future generations. This is the most self-explanatory category; if it's a crucial piece of gaming history or has become a part of our language, it belongs on this list.<br />
<br />
<strong>2. Trendsetters.</strong> Some of the most important releases in gaming history didn't invent the wheel so much as they popularized and standardized the wheel. Trends don't spawn out of nowhere; some game, at some point, paved a path to success, and other developers and publishers decided to capitalize on it.<br />
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<strong>3. Time-tested classics.</strong> Certain games come up in conversation constantly for no other reason than that they are held as the golden standard for their respective genres. I say "time-tested" because even the best games, if lacking any particularly distinctive or groundbreaking qualities, run the risk of being surpassed. Over two decades later, for example, no mention of history's greatest JRPGs is complete without mention of <em>Chrono Trigger</em>. Some games are just unbeatable.<br />
<br />
<strong>4. Cautionary tales. </strong>"Important" is not synonymous with "good," and some of the industry's most notorious disasters and disappointments warrant just as much attention as its greatest successes, if only to understand how <em>not</em> to design games or treat consumers.<br />
<br />
<strong>5. Important franchises. </strong>Many of the games on this list belong to franchises, and it's often easy to pinpoint the most noteworthy entries in a series. In the case of particularly iterative franchises, however, there's no need to get bogged down with specifics. I think any gamer worth their salt should be familiar with <span style="color: #252525;"><em>Pokémon</em>, for example, but I couldn't care less which one you play. So for certain entries on this list, I'll be naming not one specific game but an entire series.</span><br />
<span style="color: #252525;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #252525;">What you see below is the initial draft I've put together for a required-playing list. It's almost certainly incomplete, so if you have any suggestions for games that should be added (or removed!), bearing in mind the guidelines listed above, <a href="https://twitter.com/MikeSuskie">please send them my way on Twitter</a>. This began as a personal project, one with which to gauge my knowledge of the medium, but I'd love for us to work together and assemble a list that anyone can use for a similar purpose.</span><br />
<span style="color: #252525;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #252525;">Bear in mind that this is not about favorites. Some of the best games I've ever played have been omitted from the list. This is about the games that the community collectively agrees are the most important in understanding how the industry arrived at where it is today. It's about not being left out of the most relevant conversations.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #252525;">I've played the vast majority of the games listed here. Once this is finalized, I'll pick out the games I need to catch up on, list them in a separate article, and continue to gradually post updates as I push through them.</span><br />
<br />
<em>The 7th Guest</em><br />
<em>Adventure</em><br />
<em>Amnesia: The Dark Descent</em><br />
<i>Animal Crossing</i><br />
<em>Assassin's Creed </em>series<br />
<i>Batman: Arkham Asylum</i><br />
<i>Beyond Good & Evil</i><br />
<i>BioShock</i><br />
<i>Bomberman </i>series<br />
<em>Braid</em><br />
<i>Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare</i><br />
<i>Castlevania: Symphony of the Night</i><br />
<i>Chrono Trigger</i><br />
<i>Civilization </i>series<br />
<i>Contra III: The Alien Wars</i><br />
<em>Command & Conquer </em>series<br />
<i>Counter-Strike</i><br />
<i>Daikatana</i><br />
<i>Dark Souls</i><br />
<i>Day of the Tentacle</i><br />
<i>Deus Ex</i><br />
<i>Devil May Cry</i><br />
<i>Diablo II</i><br />
<i>Donkey Kong</i><br />
<i>Doom</i><br />
<em>Dragon Quest V</em><br />
<i>Duke Nukem Forever</i><br />
<i>E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial</i><br />
<i>Earthbound</i><br />
<i>The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim</i><br />
<i>Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem</i><br />
<em>F-Zero </em>series<br />
<i>Fallout: New Vegas</i><br />
<i>FIFA </i>series<br />
<i>Final Fantasy IV</i><br />
<i>Final Fantasy VI</i><br />
<i>Final Fantasy VII</i><br />
<em>Fire Emblem </em>series<br />
<em>Gain Ground</em><br />
<i>Galaga</i><br />
<i>Gears of War</i><br />
<em>Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved</em><br />
<i>GoldenEye</i><br />
<i>Gone Home</i><br />
<em>Gran Turismo </em>series<br />
<i>Grand Theft Auto III</i><br />
<i>Grim Fandango</i><br />
<i>Guitar Hero </i>series<br />
<i>Gunstar Heroes</i><br />
<i>Half-Life 2</i><br />
<i>Halo: Combat Evolved<br />Harvest Moon </i>series<br />
<i>Heroes of Might & Magic III</i><br />
<i>Hitman</i> series<br />
<i>Ico</i><br />
<i>Indigo Prophecy</i><br />
<i>Katamari Damacy</i><br />
<i>King's Quest V</i><br />
<i>League of Legends</i><br />
<em>The Legend of Zelda</em><br />
<i>The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past</i><br />
<i>The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time</i><br />
<i>Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards</i><br />
<em>The Longest Journey</em><br />
<em>Madden </em>series<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Mario Kart </i>series</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Mass Effect </i>trilogy</span><br />
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Mega Man 2</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Metal Gear Solid</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater</span></i><br />
<em>Mike Tyson's </em><em>Punch-Out!!</em><br />
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Minecraft</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Mortal Kombat</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Mortal Kombat 2</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Myst</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Oregon Trail</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">P.T.</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Pac-Man</span></i><br />
<em>Panel de Pon</em><br />
<em>PaRappa the Rapper</em><br />
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Persona 4</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millenium</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney</span></i><br />
<em>Pitfall</em><br />
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Planescape: Torment</span></i><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #252525;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Pokémon </i>series</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #252525;"><em>Pong</em></span><br />
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Portal</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Portal 2</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Quest for Glory: So You Want to Be a Hero</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Resident Evil</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Resident Evil 4</span></i><br />
<em>River Raid</em><br />
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Secret of Monkey Island</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Shadow of the Colossus</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Shenmue</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Sid Meier's Pirates!</span></i><br />
<i>Silent Hill 2</i><br />
<i>SimCity </i>series<br />
<i>The Sims </i>series<br />
<em>Solomon's Key</em><br />
<i>Sonic the Hedgehog 2</i><br />
<em>Space Invaders</em><br />
<i>Spelunky</i><br />
<i>Spider-Man 2</i><br />
<i>Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic</i><br />
<i>Star Wars: TIE Fighter</i><br />
<i>Starcraft</i><br />
<i>Street Fighter II</i><br />
<i>Super Mario 64</i><br />
<i>Super Mario Galaxy</i><br />
<em>Super Mario Bros.</em><br />
<i>Super Mario Bros. 3</i><br />
<i>Super Mario World</i><br />
<i>Super Metroid</i><br />
<i>Superman 64</i><br />
<i>System Shock 2</i><br />
<i>Team Fortress 2<br />Tecmo Super Bowl</i><br />
<i>Tetris</i><br />
<i>Thief II: The Metal Age</i><br />
<i>Tomb Raider</i><br />
<i>Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2</i><br />
<i>Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar</i><br />
<i>Ultima VII: The Black Gate</i><br />
<i>Uncharted 2: Drake's Fortune</i><br />
<i>Undertale</i><br />
<em>VVVVVV</em><br />
<i>The Walking Dead: A Telltale Games Series (Season One)</i><br />
<i>Wii Sports</i><br />
<i>Wing Commander</i><br />
<i>Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord</i><br />
<i>World of Warcraft</i><br />
<i>X-COM: UFO Defense</i><br />
<em>Xevious</em><br />
<em>Zelda II: The Adventure of Link</em><br />
<em>Zork</em><br />
<em><br /></em>
Once more, if you have any recommendations for this list, shoot me a line at <a href="https://twitter.com/MikeSuskie">@MikeSuskie</a>. Any feedback will be appreciated. Thanks!Susquatchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04067561426934895146noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3222696689475171071.post-51701712158644362522017-01-01T17:23:00.002-08:002017-01-01T17:23:49.205-08:00A ranked list of every 2016 release that I played<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Hi. I do this every year and I doubt it warrants an explanation anyway. The only note I want to make is that I adore <em>Skyrim</em> but felt that the Special Edition was a lame cash-grab, hence its low placement on this list.<br />
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* re-releases or remasters of old games<br />
^ games I'm still working on<br />
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68. <i>NightCry </i>(PC)<br />
67. <i>Energy Hook </i>(PC)<br />
66. <i>Star Fox Zero </i>(Wii U)<br />
65. <i>We Are the Dwarves </i>(PC)<br />
64. <i>XCOM 2 </i>(PC)<br />
63. <i>Attractio </i>(PS4)<br />
62. <i>Fractured Space </i>(PC)<br />
61. <i>Necropolis </i>(PC)<br />
60. <i>Tom Clancy's The Division </i>(PC)<br />
59. <i>The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition </i>(PS4) *<br />
58. <i>ReCore </i>(PC)<br />
57. <i>House of the Dying Sun </i>(PC)<br />
56. <i>Inexistence </i>(PC) *<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">55. <span style="background-color: white; color: #252525;"><i>Abzû </i>(PC)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">54. <i>Song of the Deep </i>(PC)</span><br />
53. <i>Seasons After Fall </i>(PC)<br />
52. <i>Inside </i>(PC)<br />
51. <i>The Aquatic Adventure of the Last Human </i>(PC)<br />
50. <i>Salt and Sanctuary </i>(PS4)<br />
49. <i>Virginia </i>(PC)<br />
48. <i>Hyper Light Drifter </i>(PC)<br />
47. <i>Firewatch </i>(PC)<br />
46. <i>Hexoscope</i> (PC) ^<br />
45. <i>Grow Up </i>(PC)<br />
44. <i>Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak </i>(PC)<br />
43. <i>Deus Ex Go </i>(Android) ^<br />
42. <i>Devil Daggers </i>(PC)<br />
41. <i>Evolve Stage 2 </i>(PC) *<br />
40. <i>Sky Break </i>(PC)^<br />
39. <i>Out There Somewhere </i>(PC)<br />
38. <i>Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen </i>(PC) *<br />
37. <i>Watch Dogs 2 </i>(PC) ^<br />
36. <i>Ratchet & Clank </i>(PS4)<br />
35. <i>Furi </i>(PC)<br />
34. <i style="color: #252525;">Pokémon Moon </i><span style="color: #252525;">(3DS) ^</span><br />
33. <i>Battlefield 1 </i>(PS4)<br />
32. <i>Mirror's Edge Catalyst </i>(PC) ^<br />
31. <i>Unravel </i>(PC)<br />
30. <i>Final Fantasy XV </i>(PS4)<br />
29. <i>The Banner Saga 2 </i>(PC) ^<br />
28. <i>Deus Ex: Mankind Divided </i>(PC)<br />
27. <i>Hitman </i>(PC) ^<br />
26. <i>Valley </i>(PC)<br />
25. <i>Let It Die </i>(PS4) ^<br />
24. <i>Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition </i>(PC) *<br />
23. <i>Uncharted 4: A Thief's End </i>(PS4)<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">22. <span style="background-color: white; color: #252525;"><i>Pokémon Go </i>(Android)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">21. <i>Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare </i>(PS4)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">20. <i>Dishonored 2</i> (PS4)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">19. <i>Another Metroid II Remake</i> (PC) *</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">18. <i>Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight</i> (PC)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">17. <i>Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest </i>(3DS) ^</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">16. <i>Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir </i>(PS4) *^</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">15. <i>Beholder </i>(PC)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">14. <i>DarkMaus </i>(PC)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">13. <i>Dark Souls III </i>(PC)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">12. <i>Darkest Dungeon </i>(PC)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">11. <i>Reigns </i>(PC/Android)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">10. <i>Grim Dawn </i>(PC)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">9. <i>Severed </i>(Vita)</span><br />
8. <i>The Witness </i>(PC)<br />
7. <i>Overwatch </i>(PC)<br />
6. <i>The Last Guardian </i>(PS4)<br />
5. <i>Redout</i> (PC)<br />
4. <i>Titanfall 2 </i>(PC)<br />
3. <i>Owlboy</i> (PC)<br />
2. <i>Superhot</i> (PC)<br />
1. <i>Doom </i>(PC)Susquatchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04067561426934895146noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3222696689475171071.post-49529081838299189282016-12-28T04:05:00.000-08:002016-12-30T12:40:50.880-08:00Counting down my ten favorite games of 2016, as one does<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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As we're all eager to shelve the year 2016, there are two important things to bear in mind: (a) Next year will be probably be worse because <i>he hasn't even taken office yet</i>, and (b) as we're recoiling from a bunch of major celebrity deaths and the realization that there are a lot more closet white nationalists in this country than we'd imagined, it's healthy to also reflect on the good things that happened in 2016, overshadowed as they may be.</div>
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It was a good year for games. Not an all-timer, not a 1998 or a 2007, but there were enough great releases this year that I filled my top ten with considerable spillover.</div>
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Let's discuss the honorable mentions, then. First is <b style="font-style: italic;">Reigns</b>, a neat little kingdom-sim-meets-Tinder that revolves entirely around yes-or-no questions. It's funny and clever, though I discovered after the fact that the game takes an awful lot of cues from <i>Sort the Court</i>, hence its removal from my top ten. <i style="font-weight: bold;">Dark Souls III</i> offered little that we hadn't seen before but gave the series a fitting and nostalgic sendoff, and for those <i>Souls </i>fans looking to fill the gap, <i style="font-weight: bold;">DarkMaus</i> is my favorite of the wannabes. <i style="font-weight: bold;">Darkest Dungeon</i> also earns a mention almost by default given how much time I've spent with it, though I still haven't finished it, and given some of the late-game frustrations, there's a question mark over whether I ever will. Do play it, though.</div>
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Finally, I do want to mention <span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Pok</span><span style="background: white; font-family: inherit; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold; line-height: 107%;">é</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i style="font-weight: bold;">mon Go</i> for being one of the most fascinating experiments in social gaming that I've ever seen. It's not "good" by the standards that we highfalutin critics hold, even after a number of patches have tightened the screws, but it's a use of technology to expand the definition of gaming beyond simply giving us prettier graphics every few years. Plus, it's probably the first game that my mother and I like, so that's noteworthy. She usually plays <i>Bejeweled</i> or whatever.</span></div>
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Before we kick off the list, I want to note that I was on the <a href="http://gamecritics.com/richard-naik/gamecritics-com-radio-episode-158-2016-goty-extravaganza/">GameCritics Game of the Year</a> podcast this year, which conveniently went up right around the time I finished this article. Go ahead and listen to that for an exhaustively thorough look back at the highs and lows of 2016 in gaming.</div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Right. So here are the top ten.</span></div>
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<b>10. <i>Grim Dawn </i>(PC)</b></div>
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I'm told from virtually every source that <i>Diablo III </i>eventually became a stellar game after its <a href="http://www.honestgamers.com/10306/pc/diablo-iii/review.html">nightmarish launch</a>. I don't doubt it; I could probably go play it right now, in its current state, and have a blast. But it's a matter of principle - I gave the game its time of day, and it was a broken mess, and I've moved on. Maybe it's just good timing that <i>Grim Dawn</i> finally rescued me from my starvation for a <i>Diablo</i>-style click-'em-up, but what do you want from me? With an outstanding dual-class character-building system and a setting that reminds me more than a little bit of <i>Bloodborne </i>(all blunderbusses and floppy hats and forbidden sciences), <i>Grim Dawn</i> hit exactly the right notes for me and, what do you know, actually worked properly out of the figurative box. If you're into this sort of game - you know who you are - you need <i>Grim Dawn</i> yesterday. (<a href="http://www.honestgamers.com/12919/pc/grim-dawn/review.html">Review.</a>)<br />
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<b>9. <i>Severed </i>(Vita)</b></div>
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DrinkBox Studios' previous game, <i>Guacamelee</i>, was full of personality and light on excess. But it was also a Metroidvania, making it the easiest of easy sells for me. With <i>Severed</i>, they took on the task of winning me over with a grid-based dungeon crawler, a genre which (to put it politely) typically inspires extreme apathy from me. They succeeded by giving it the same lavish visuals and atmosphere, by pumping full of <i>Metroid</i> design philosophies where the world unravels as your inventory expands, and shifting the combat from grinding and number-crunching to <i>Fruit Ninja</i>. I enjoyed it enough to earn a Platinum trophy, one of only three games I've ever done that with. On a more personal note, I only found room on this list for one handheld game, so it may as well be the title that actually served me well on the road - <i>Severed</i> is partly to thank for getting me through a particularly grueling overnight stay on a sidewalk outside of Madison Square Garden. (<a href="http://mikesuskie.blogspot.com/2016/12/review-shots-december-15-2016.html">Review.</a>)<br />
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<b>8. <i>The Witness </i>(PC)</b></div>
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Jonathan Blow pulled off a remarkable trick this year: He figured out how to turn <i>Myst</i> into something I actually want to play. My long-running problem with that game is its lack of a central, driving mechanic. The puzzles shared no relation to one another; you were effectively wiping your acquired skills off the slate every time you moved to a new challenge. <i>The Witness</i> takes the same premise - you're trapped on a beautiful island full of odd mechanisms with very little explanation as to why they're there - but ties it all together with line puzzles that introduce new twists at a perfectly accelerating rate. Every puzzle solved grants you skills that can be taken forward and applied to new situations. That's how all games should work, and certainly how <i>Myst</i> should have, all these years. <i>The Witness</i> never talks to you but constantly finds ways to teach you. Don't look for narrative weight where there is none; just get lost in a relaxing and perfectly paced exploro-puzzler. (<a href="http://www.honestgamers.com/12848/pc/the-witness/review.html">Review.</a>)</div>
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<b>7. <i>Overwatch </i>(PC)</b></div>
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Now that Valve seems to have more or less retired from game development and spends its days maintaining <i>Dota 2</i> and making every digital gaming storefront that isn't Steam look bad, perhaps <i>Overwatch </i>is the closest thing we'll ever get to a <i>Team Fortress 3</i>. While Blizzard has more experience fine-tuning large-scale multiplayer games than anyone (and should be commended here for one of the smoothest launches in recent memory), this is their first stab at a competitive shooter. For them to replace the formula this well, balancing nearly two dozen classes and consistently making every player feel important, is a titanic accomplishment even when the game has very few of its own ideas. The dry, witless writing means <i>Overwatch</i> likely won't linger after I've put it aside for good, but Blizzard can remedy that by simply giving me reasons to keep coming back, and their ongoing support, coupled with the game's overwhelming popularity, has left little to be desired. (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QU2JY7Nsqsc">Playcast.</a>)<br />
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<b>6. <i>The Last Guardian </i>(PS4)</b><br />
<b><br /></b>By purely objective standards, there are plenty of 2016 releases more deserving of a spot on this list than <i>The Last Guardian</i>. They had better controls, smoother framerates, smarter AI, and less nausea-inducing cameras. But I don't think about those games as much as I think about <i>The Last Guardian</i>. I have a rocky relationship with Fumito Ueda's previous work, so take this with a grain of salt, but I think his long-awaited third game is his best. It preserves the gorgeous-yet-imposing environmental design and deep, dialog-free relationships that are a staple of his work, and while he's yet to produce a game that handles well, he's wise enough here to at least avoid putting you in situations where quick reflexes are required. I was watching, and the game was out for several weeks before a plot synopsis showed up on the game's Wikipedia page. It was like an unspoken agreement between fans: Don't spoil this for yourself. Develop this bond with Trico yourself and witness the pitch-perfect manner in which Ueda closes it. (<a href="http://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/the-last-guardian-review/">Review.</a>)<br />
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<b>5. <i>Redout </i>(PC)</b></div>
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<b><br /></b>This is not simply a game that I enjoy. I've thought about it and I'm convinced that <i>Redout </i>is the absolute best of its genre, the new standard by which I will judge all anti-gravity racers. It mixes the slick audiovisual style of <i>Wipeout</i> with the until-now unparalleled sense of speed exhibited in the <i>F-Zero </i>series, and adds just enough subtle twists of its own - namely the need to pitch your craft up and down to match the contours of the track - to establish an identity of its own. <i>Redout</i> is still pretty obscure, no thanks to a lack of buzz and a somewhat hefty $35 price tag, so the multiplayer scene's been pretty dormant from the word go, but the game finds value in its surprisingly substantial single-player campaign. And, at the end of the day, it just feels <i>so damn good</i> to play and master this thing. I promise to only use the word "exhilarating" twice in this article, and this is one of those times. Using any other adjective would do a disservice to the interactive roller coaster that is <i>Redout</i>. (<a href="http://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/redout-review/">Review.</a>)</div>
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<b>4. <i>Titanfall 2 </i>(PC)</b></div>
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I made a grave mistake in 2014 when I neglected to put the original <i>Titanfall</i>, one of my favorite multiplayer games in recent memory, on my top ten. In retrospect, the move seems outright prophetic. Though I absolutely got my money's worth out of the first game, its omission of a single-player campaign makes it look downright incomplete next to its sequel, which not only includes a story mode but knocks it out of the damn park. If not for <i>Doom</i>, this would be 2016's true antithesis to the modern military shooter, a blazing and large scale romp that's short enough on fat to never be dull but sensible enough to save its most exciting material for the final act - a true rising action. The multiplayer features only minor tweaks, but the dynamic between on-foot and mech combat is so strong that I've already put over 70 hours into this thing and have no intention of stopping. What a grim mistake it was for EA to release this game the week after <i>Battlefield 1</i>. It deserves an audience. (<a href="http://mikesuskie.blogspot.com/2016/11/review-shots-november-20-2016.html">Review.</a>)<br />
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<b>3. <i>Owlboy</i> (PC)</b></div>
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I struggle to summarize <i>Owlboy</i> in a single paragraph because the game is just so full of wonder, every level shining for its own reason. Maybe there's an exciting set piece, maybe a neat new mechanic is introduced, maybe a quirky new character shows up, maybe the story takes a surprising turn, maybe that background art just looks <i>particularly</i> nice. D-Pad Studio began working on <i>Owlboy -</i> one of the most passionate tributes to classic 2D gaming I've seen in the modern era - all the way back in 2007, but when I play it, I don't see development hell. I see patience, the desire to make every moment playing <i>Owlboy </i>memorable, even if it takes nine years to finish the damn thing. I had no issue deciding on my top three for 2016 but agonized over the order; it's painful to me that a game as beautiful, charming and creative as <i>Owlboy</i> can only place third. (<a href="http://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/owlboy-review/">Review.</a>)<br />
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<b>2. <i>Superhot </i>(PC)</b></div>
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You think you've seen everything, and then every once in a while a game like <i>Superhot</i> comes along to remind you how much juice there's yet to be squeezed out of this medium. While bullet-time has been done to death in video games, <i>Superhot</i>'s approach - to make time only move when you do - gives its combat a turn-based vibe the transforms goofy '80s action movie scenarios into outright puzzles. It is, refreshingly, a blood-pumping action yarn that requires all brains and zero reflexes. It is a game that gives you the power to do impossibly awesome things. Its surprisingly cool meta-narrative (which had an <a href="http://mikesuskie.blogspot.com/2016/03/spoilerhot.html">amusing impact on social media</a> the week of its launch) is a bonus bit of window dressing, but even if <i>Superhot </i>had been presented as a series of static challenges with no connective tissue, it'd still be fresh enough - and, in an impressive show of restraint, <i>lean </i>enough - to make for one of the year's easiest recommendations, even for a relatively high entrance fee. Because it is, after all, the most innovative... yeah, surely you know the line by now. (<a href="http://gamecritics.com/mike-suskie/superhot-review/">Review.</a>)<br />
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<b>1. <i>Doom </i>(PC)</b></div>
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For years, the AAA shooter scene has subtly deteriorated into something murky and unpleasant, and not without good reason. I'd rank <i>Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare</i> and the original <i>Gears of War</i> among the best and most influential games of the last decade. At the time, the idea of an entire console generation's worth of shooter take their cues would've made me salivate. That happened, and look where it got us: overrun with creepy American nationalist fantasies. I have to assume that <i>Call of Duty</i> went to space this year because, as per series continuity, we've run out of people on Earth to murder.<br />
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And <i>Gears</i>? I used to buy those things on day one, yet a new one came out this year and I still haven't touched it. 2016 is the year when I finally hung up on <i>Gears</i>, when I officially lost my patience for spending the majority of a so-called action game with my face in the mud because my character's armor weighs as much as a tank but still can't protect him from more than a couple of shots before he needs a timeout. (I did wind up putting <i>Gears 4</i> on my Christmas list, because if I'm gonna play it at all, I'd rather someone else paid for it.)<br />
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I could go on - about how <i>Halo</i> has collapsed under its own narrative weight, or how <i>Destiny</i> is a toy box with no toys in it, or how <i>The Division</i> is that very same toy box but painted grey - but the point is that <i>Doom</i> looked at the state of the AAA shooter and proclaimed, "I reject your bullshit." It's fast. It's gruesome. It's <i>metal</i>. It does everything in its power to keep you out of cover and in the action. And it features a silent protagonist who cares as little about the plot as we do. No sappy piano cover of "Mad World" as supporting characters die. No ruminations over the cost of war. These are demons from hell. <i>Give us a goddamn shotgun</i>.<br />
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I want to spend paragraphs talking about how intricate <i>Doom</i>'s level design is, and how satisfying its weapons feel, and how perfectly it runs, and how much you're cheating yourself if you're not experiencing this baby with a mouse and keyboard. But what ultimately makes <i>Doom</i> my favorite game of the year is that it is precisely the game that I needed at this very moment. I can now signal the end of the era in which the best modern shooters are the ones like <i>Spec Ops: The Line</i> and <i>Wolfenstein: The New Order </i>primarily for pointing out how awful modern shooters are. We've gotten the postmodern stuff out of our systems, and now, hopefully, we can go back to basics, when shooters were breezy, exhilarating, <i>fun</i>. And leading that charge? <i>Doom</i>. (<a href="http://mikesuskie.blogspot.com/2016/11/review-shots-november-20-2016.html">Review.</a>)</div>
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And now on to the miscellaneous categories.</div>
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<b>Most overrated: </b><i>Inside</i></div>
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<b>Most underrated: </b><i>The Witness</i></div>
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<b>Most overlooked: </b><i>Redout</i></div>
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<b>Most visually striking: </b><i>Owlboy</i></div>
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<b>All-out best-looking game: </b><i>Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare</i></div>
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<b>Best story: </b><i>The Last Guardian</i></div>
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<b>Best writing: </b><i>Reigns</i>, I guess? Weak year</div>
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<b>Best character: </b>Geddy (<i>Owlboy</i>)</div>
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<b>Best original soundtrack: </b><i>Virginia</i></div>
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<b>Best licensed soundtrack: </b><i>Forza Horizon 3</i></div>
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<b>Biggest surprise: </b><i>Doom</i></div>
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<b>Biggest disappointment: </b><i>ReCore</i></div>
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<b>Most enjoyable bad game: </b><i>Furi</i></div>
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<b>Least enjoyable good game: </b><i>The Banner Saga 2</i><br />
<b>Best PC port: </b><i>Titanfall 2</i></div>
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<b>Game that I spent the most time with: </b><i>Overwatch</i></div>
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<b>Game that I spent the least time with before judging: </b><i>We Are the Dwarves</i></div>
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<b>Game that I most wanted to play, but didn't: </b><i>Fire Emblem Fates</i></div>
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<b>Game I literally own that I most wanted to play, but didn't: </b><i>7th Dragon III: Code VFD</i></div>
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<b>Best game that I still haven't finished: </b><i>Darkest Dungeon</i></div>
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<b>All-out worst game that I played: </b><i>NightCry</i></div>
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<b>Best non-2016 game that I first played in 2016: </b><i>Elite Dangerous</i></div>
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<b>Best remake/re-release: </b><i>Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir</i><br />
<b>Most anticipated game this coming year: </b><i>Yooka-Laylee</i></div>
Susquatchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04067561426934895146noreply@blogger.com0