So it's getting about that time of the year in which we can look back and reflect on what has entertained us, bored us, awed us, and flat out disappointed us. The game Award nominee's have been announced, and people are starting to pick their favorites for the year so I thought I'd come here and do the same.
The Good Stuff:
God of War - God of War was a game that completely blew me away by both it's story and its graphics. I was amazed and excited for Kratos's new adventure in the Norse world. In these aspects GoW did not disappoint. Though the story was cliche for a God of War game, in which every simple task seems to be arbitrarily blocked off by something that must be resolved by a side adventure and the feeling of constantly having a hurdle in place, the actual story beats between Kratos and his son Boy are wonderful. Where GoW got a little off putting for me was unfortunately the most important aspect of a GoW game and that is the combat. The new behind the back limit view and the functions of the new axe weapon didn't really work for me. I never felt like Kratos even after the middle of the game where (spoilers) the Blades of Choas come back into play. Ultimately my first playthrough of the game was hurt by this new combat system. However, the New Game + replay I did of the game was fucking amazing, being over-leveled, over-powered, and completely badass totally changed the game for me and playing through the game a second time was so much fun I 100%'ed it.
Assassin's Creed Odyssey - Okay so admittedly this game is a little contentious. Odyssey is a wonderfully huge open world with all sort of interesting little mechanics for the player to take part in, from ship battles, to exploration, to mercenaries, to war front-esque missions, all of these activities are incredibly fun and interesting but they are all also bogged down by the grind. AC:O is a game which almost requires an extra purchase of the exp and gold booster to truely have free reign over the game. Which is a shame because it really is the best AC game I've played so far. I don't blame anyone who skipped this due to the shit Ubisoft practices forced into it.
Spider-Man: There isn't anything for me to say about Spider-Man other than, this is simply the best super heroes video game ever made period. Everything Spider-Man does to make you FEEL like Spider-Man is spot on perfect. The movement, the ability in combat, the humor and banter, it's all perfect. While you can say the Rocksteady Batman games were fantastic, the difference between Spider-Man and Batman in this context is that Spider-Man actually IS Superpowered. Batman will always be tied to the limitations of being a normal dude. This allows Spider-man to react faster, do far more things with the utility of his webs, be a more interesting character to use than Batman ever can be. Combine that with how wonderful the open world of New York is, where most open world games just dump a shitload of icons at you making it look and feel overwhelming, Spider-Man reveals activities on the map gradually as you progress the main plot. This allowed me to 100% each side activity as they became available in bite-sized chunks. Which I thought was fantastic and kept me from getting bored by them.
Red Dead Redemption 2? - I dunno, not interested in this game at all, but everyone seems to like it.
The Bad Stuff:
Sadly 2018 doesn't even come close imo to the fantastic wave of games we got in 2017. While I was excited for plenty in 2018, I ended up very disappointed by most of it. Such as....
Shadow of the Tomb Raider - I am a HUGE fucking fan of the first two rebooted Tomb Raider games. I thought the grittier origin stories for Lara were great and were building up to something truly awesome. But as it turns out, they weren't. Shadow of the Tomb Raider plays fine, the tombs are fine, the gun play, the stealth, the mechanics are fine. However the main feature of the game, the story, the villains, are all shit. Lara doesn't grow as a character, she doesn't end up becoming the Tomb Raider of tradition, she doesn't even develop from the character she was in the first two games. If anything, I think she regresses as a character, and is really just a shit person. The villains here, this all powerful shadow organization of Trinity, turn out to just be this cult trying to become mayan gods or something, all with the sole purpose of protecting their small little shit village in the middle of South America somewhere. I don't get it, it's fucking dumb. And two or three of the main bad guys die off screen with no involvement of Lara or the player at all. Rushed and forces and contrived as hell, Shadow of the Tomb Raider was dogshit.
Fallout 76 - Bethesda is by far the WORST successful development studio of all time. From the moment Fallout 76 was announced and the details of them making a Fallout MMO, I knew that it would probably end up being basically the worst thing ever. And fucking bloody hell was I right. When a game studio can't bother to polish up the 70th remaster of a 7 year old game, what hope do you have that they'd suddenly be able to pull an MMO out of their ass? From the gate Fallout 76 just feels empty, and not in the way a post apocalyptic game should feel empty. You run around and just....do stuff? There never feels like there is any agency, and the gunplay itself is somehow worse than it has ever been, VATS is basically broken. Hell you can't even stay connected to the game for any real length of time, I was disconnected regularly every 30 minutes. Fallout 76 sucks.
Octopath Traveler - God this game is beautiful. That's it. That's all it has. A unbelievably grindy game with mundane RPG battle mechanics and a story that is disjointed to say the least. Octopath was a game that everyone looked forward too from the moment screenshots were released, a return to the wonderful SNES days of games like Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 6, except that Octopath only serves as a visual return to those days. AS the plot itself is divided into 8 character stories that barely overlap in any meaningful way. The combat mechanic themselves are really uninteresting and the game feels like it bloats the HP of the boss fights just to drag them out. It's not challenging, it's not fun, and it's not exciting.
Far Cry 5 - Yep Far Cry again. Not interesting in the very least. The biggest problem I had with Far Cry 5 is the lack of interesting characters. The main character has no motivation, in fact as I write this, I don't even remember if the character had a name or spoke. The villains are overblown and make no sense because they are given no context. Far Cry 3 was a magical experience with an interesting Player-character and a very interesting villain (even if he died way to early in the story), Far Cry 4 was not as good but it still tried and still had it's moments. Far Cry 5 just said "Fuck it, go blow up rednecks" and left it at that. The game itself is polished, and plays fine. It just lacks any real reason to keep playing it beyond maybe a couple of hours.
Vampyr - Fuck you Vampyr, don't give me a game saying I can be a badass Vampyr and then punish me for being a Vampyr. You fucking fuck of a game. If I wanted to get to know a bunch of peasant shit bricks I would have....I dunno played something else. Vampyr is a game that says "You can drink the blood of anybody you want and grow really powerful, but if you kill people you'll lose your quests, and story beats and the people will fear you." It is a game that has no balance and really feels like the developers couldn't decide what game they wanted to make. If you kill NPC's you get strong but you loose a lot of questlines and context and the world building stuff that really makes an RPG interesting. However if you don't kill people (which is basically required for 100% completion) then you end up facing really overleveled enemies where even if you are good at the combat it becomes a war of attrition where eventually you'll make a single mistake and die only to then lose over an hour of progress because you forgot to save.
The Crew 2 - The first crew game was a flawed game, but the idea of an open world action racing game with a story that carried you around the country to try and take down your brother's killer was uniquely placed into a racing game. It reminded me of the old Need for Speed Underground and Most Wanted games where the racing was pushed along by a cheesy but ultimately fun storyline. The Crew 2 had a chance to take that idea and expand upon it, cleaning it up while at the same time giving you more vehicles to drive. Instead the Crew 2 is a mess. They basically cut any resemblance of story and just threw a bunch of shit on a map for you to do. There is nothing excite or special here. Hell the Horizon games do the same thing only 100X better.
Diablo Immortal - I know this game isn't out yet. But Fuck it away. Fuck it and fuck Blizzard for using Blizzcon to announce this piece of trash idea.
Anyway those are my good and bad highlights of 2018. What are yours?
The Good Stuff:
God of War - God of War was a game that completely blew me away by both it's story and its graphics. I was amazed and excited for Kratos's new adventure in the Norse world. In these aspects GoW did not disappoint. Though the story was cliche for a God of War game, in which every simple task seems to be arbitrarily blocked off by something that must be resolved by a side adventure and the feeling of constantly having a hurdle in place, the actual story beats between Kratos and his son Boy are wonderful. Where GoW got a little off putting for me was unfortunately the most important aspect of a GoW game and that is the combat. The new behind the back limit view and the functions of the new axe weapon didn't really work for me. I never felt like Kratos even after the middle of the game where (spoilers) the Blades of Choas come back into play. Ultimately my first playthrough of the game was hurt by this new combat system. However, the New Game + replay I did of the game was fucking amazing, being over-leveled, over-powered, and completely badass totally changed the game for me and playing through the game a second time was so much fun I 100%'ed it.
Assassin's Creed Odyssey - Okay so admittedly this game is a little contentious. Odyssey is a wonderfully huge open world with all sort of interesting little mechanics for the player to take part in, from ship battles, to exploration, to mercenaries, to war front-esque missions, all of these activities are incredibly fun and interesting but they are all also bogged down by the grind. AC:O is a game which almost requires an extra purchase of the exp and gold booster to truely have free reign over the game. Which is a shame because it really is the best AC game I've played so far. I don't blame anyone who skipped this due to the shit Ubisoft practices forced into it.
Spider-Man: There isn't anything for me to say about Spider-Man other than, this is simply the best super heroes video game ever made period. Everything Spider-Man does to make you FEEL like Spider-Man is spot on perfect. The movement, the ability in combat, the humor and banter, it's all perfect. While you can say the Rocksteady Batman games were fantastic, the difference between Spider-Man and Batman in this context is that Spider-Man actually IS Superpowered. Batman will always be tied to the limitations of being a normal dude. This allows Spider-man to react faster, do far more things with the utility of his webs, be a more interesting character to use than Batman ever can be. Combine that with how wonderful the open world of New York is, where most open world games just dump a shitload of icons at you making it look and feel overwhelming, Spider-Man reveals activities on the map gradually as you progress the main plot. This allowed me to 100% each side activity as they became available in bite-sized chunks. Which I thought was fantastic and kept me from getting bored by them.
Red Dead Redemption 2? - I dunno, not interested in this game at all, but everyone seems to like it.
The Bad Stuff:
Sadly 2018 doesn't even come close imo to the fantastic wave of games we got in 2017. While I was excited for plenty in 2018, I ended up very disappointed by most of it. Such as....
Shadow of the Tomb Raider - I am a HUGE fucking fan of the first two rebooted Tomb Raider games. I thought the grittier origin stories for Lara were great and were building up to something truly awesome. But as it turns out, they weren't. Shadow of the Tomb Raider plays fine, the tombs are fine, the gun play, the stealth, the mechanics are fine. However the main feature of the game, the story, the villains, are all shit. Lara doesn't grow as a character, she doesn't end up becoming the Tomb Raider of tradition, she doesn't even develop from the character she was in the first two games. If anything, I think she regresses as a character, and is really just a shit person. The villains here, this all powerful shadow organization of Trinity, turn out to just be this cult trying to become mayan gods or something, all with the sole purpose of protecting their small little shit village in the middle of South America somewhere. I don't get it, it's fucking dumb. And two or three of the main bad guys die off screen with no involvement of Lara or the player at all. Rushed and forces and contrived as hell, Shadow of the Tomb Raider was dogshit.
Fallout 76 - Bethesda is by far the WORST successful development studio of all time. From the moment Fallout 76 was announced and the details of them making a Fallout MMO, I knew that it would probably end up being basically the worst thing ever. And fucking bloody hell was I right. When a game studio can't bother to polish up the 70th remaster of a 7 year old game, what hope do you have that they'd suddenly be able to pull an MMO out of their ass? From the gate Fallout 76 just feels empty, and not in the way a post apocalyptic game should feel empty. You run around and just....do stuff? There never feels like there is any agency, and the gunplay itself is somehow worse than it has ever been, VATS is basically broken. Hell you can't even stay connected to the game for any real length of time, I was disconnected regularly every 30 minutes. Fallout 76 sucks.
Octopath Traveler - God this game is beautiful. That's it. That's all it has. A unbelievably grindy game with mundane RPG battle mechanics and a story that is disjointed to say the least. Octopath was a game that everyone looked forward too from the moment screenshots were released, a return to the wonderful SNES days of games like Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 6, except that Octopath only serves as a visual return to those days. AS the plot itself is divided into 8 character stories that barely overlap in any meaningful way. The combat mechanic themselves are really uninteresting and the game feels like it bloats the HP of the boss fights just to drag them out. It's not challenging, it's not fun, and it's not exciting.
Far Cry 5 - Yep Far Cry again. Not interesting in the very least. The biggest problem I had with Far Cry 5 is the lack of interesting characters. The main character has no motivation, in fact as I write this, I don't even remember if the character had a name or spoke. The villains are overblown and make no sense because they are given no context. Far Cry 3 was a magical experience with an interesting Player-character and a very interesting villain (even if he died way to early in the story), Far Cry 4 was not as good but it still tried and still had it's moments. Far Cry 5 just said "Fuck it, go blow up rednecks" and left it at that. The game itself is polished, and plays fine. It just lacks any real reason to keep playing it beyond maybe a couple of hours.
Vampyr - Fuck you Vampyr, don't give me a game saying I can be a badass Vampyr and then punish me for being a Vampyr. You fucking fuck of a game. If I wanted to get to know a bunch of peasant shit bricks I would have....I dunno played something else. Vampyr is a game that says "You can drink the blood of anybody you want and grow really powerful, but if you kill people you'll lose your quests, and story beats and the people will fear you." It is a game that has no balance and really feels like the developers couldn't decide what game they wanted to make. If you kill NPC's you get strong but you loose a lot of questlines and context and the world building stuff that really makes an RPG interesting. However if you don't kill people (which is basically required for 100% completion) then you end up facing really overleveled enemies where even if you are good at the combat it becomes a war of attrition where eventually you'll make a single mistake and die only to then lose over an hour of progress because you forgot to save.
The Crew 2 - The first crew game was a flawed game, but the idea of an open world action racing game with a story that carried you around the country to try and take down your brother's killer was uniquely placed into a racing game. It reminded me of the old Need for Speed Underground and Most Wanted games where the racing was pushed along by a cheesy but ultimately fun storyline. The Crew 2 had a chance to take that idea and expand upon it, cleaning it up while at the same time giving you more vehicles to drive. Instead the Crew 2 is a mess. They basically cut any resemblance of story and just threw a bunch of shit on a map for you to do. There is nothing excite or special here. Hell the Horizon games do the same thing only 100X better.
Diablo Immortal - I know this game isn't out yet. But Fuck it away. Fuck it and fuck Blizzard for using Blizzcon to announce this piece of trash idea.
Anyway those are my good and bad highlights of 2018. What are yours?
