Another year, another gluttony of disappointments, masterpieces, and inevitable failed ports. It was a year of growing pains for the home console market, as well as the death throes of yet another Nintendo console that probably is on its way out after Smash Bros stops putting out DLC. We laughed, we cried, and we also argued whether or not MGSV was incomplete by the standards of Slavoj Zizek. The answers lie somewhere between his cocaine-addled nostrils and the asscrack where he keeps all his vintage NES instruction manuals. Philosophical purview aside, let's count down my own Top Ten games of 2015. 10) NEKO ATSUNE (Mobile phones and whatever) Never before has a stupid mobile game captured my bitter, hate-filled soul like Neko Atsune. Originally out in Nippon last year, the English version for stupid gaijins only recently dropped onto our disgusting mobile computers this autumn. My girlfriend has been playing this for over 100 years now, and I'm quite jealous of the spacious cat emporium she has built in that time. I'm still just a cat newb at this, building up my pitiful yard with rubber balls and socks. It's a very tiny app with very short bursts of activity, but I love this stupid cat-butthole simulator and it has brought me more joy than all the old-school isometric RPGs in the world. 9) MORTAL KOMBAT X (PS4, XB1, "PC") With the road from the classic arcade games to the low point of Armageddon and then screaming back to relevance with its resurrection in 2011, Mortal Kombat had accomplished a huge feat: finally stepping into the competitive fighting game community. Years and years back, such a notion would have been absolutely ludicrous--but MK9 broke the mold, and MKX built upon the foundation with an even better set of claws. Heralded by the interesting Variation systems for each characters, the roster took an even stranger turn when it came to developing new strategies--suddenly, almost every combatant had at least 2 or 3 viable modified playstyles to choose from. While the end result doesn't always play out for a few guys on the roster, it indubitably made things a lot better. Suddenly, you could learn a core character but still change things up a little for your matchups. MKX isn't quite Street Fighter, an ArcSys game, or Marvel when it comes to hitboxes and the dialed combos--but it has taken huge steps in terms of reputation, both competitively and in single-player content. Boasting some awesome production efforts and buckets of fanservice--it has Jason Voorhees and the fucking Predator, for god's sake--MKX is tough to ignore when discussing fighting games that offer a gluttony of things to do. Guilty Gear Xrd, while an awesome game in its own right, misses the mark by just a bit when it comes to how much time I've spent just fucking around in MKX, against friends or entombing myself in the numerous challenge modes it offers. Netherrealm Studios has reached the apex in terms of how far this franchise has come, and I can't wait to play as Alien and Leatherface and Taco Bell Triple Meat Robot. 8) XENOBLADE CHRONICLES X (WiiU) This is more or less a vote of confidence since I haven't even received my goddamn gundam robot yet. At times, XCX can be very fatiguing and sluggish; I'll get frustrated trying to get new landmarks but a level 100 brontosaurus will bite my ass and send me all the way back. The itemization is just as dense and impenetrable as the last game, and the story/characters are so piss-poor that it boggles my goddamn mind that this came from the same studio responsible for Reyn Time and Riki the Incredible Heropon. The gameplay and combat, however, have been taken to an extreme level, pushed to a new zenith in terms of choices and strategy. It's just a shame that this game barely tells you anything and you're going to have to grind at certain junctures to get places. The actual affinity missions and plot points are pretty good, but that's providing you have the ingenuity to get to those points. It doesn't help that the music in the main world hub is so fucking shockingly bad that I often just mute the whole goddamn game. It's a shame that there's no music volume option; it blares over even dialogue in story cutscenes. Although the soundtrack is a mixed bag at best, it's not as good as the previous game--nothing was as memorable as Gaur Plains or even the big Nopon Tree. That's another thing I hate, which is that we only have one main hub and nothing else. At least in XC for Wii, we could visit spaceman High Entia palaces or half-finished Colony 9 dirtclods. Here, it's just one big city accompanied by the worst fucking theme I'ver heard in years. It sounds like I hate this game with a passion but in reality, I've just had to trudge through so much dumbfounding crap that I've taken a break from playing this. Like I said before, nothing is explained and I had to figure out the easiest way to go about business myself. Thus, I haven't played enough of this to really formulate an opinion, almost partially because I'm scared I'm going to default with "I'm disappointed in this." XCX does a lot right but right now there's far more it gets wrong in terms of fucking tiring chores and plasma-thin character beats. 7) BATMAN: ARKHAM KNIGHT (PS4, XB1, "PC") I pick Arkham Knight despite the fact that the last Riddler racetrack segment made me so pissed off that my girlfriend actually thought I would go on a shooting spree or do something insane like buy an Ouya. This is also in spite of the fact that Batman is unplayable on PC and created possibly the most hilarious and inept backlash ever in terms of Steam refunds. And yes, all the fucking challenge maps were only put back in after everyone cried about it (rightfully so.) A lot of negatives there but if you play Arkham Knight in all its beauty on a console--something the developers can't even believe works, as I understand--you can see just how satisfying it is to BE THE BATMAN, AND ALSO HIS CAR. Batmobile puzzles aside, I actually found the Macross Tank segments enjoyable, and the combat+stealth has never been better. The fights are more complex, bringing in new threats constantly, making the old buttonmash aspects less viable than ever. The predator gameplay is even more fun now that the criminals will eventually adapt to your oft-used tactics, doing things like destroying the gargoyles or moving in pairs to nullify weapons and movement options. It's a fun Batman story, even if the ending falls flat--but let's all be honest, if the Joker didn't fucking die in Arkahm City aka "Fanfiction City" then the whole fucked-up cottage pie of a narrative wouldn't have been notable. Batman has to save the world again, blah blah blah but this time, there's even more to do in terms of side missions and more ways to do it. Yes, it's another Batman, but I fucking love Batman and liked this one enough to play it twice over. With Challenge Maps added (ten bux lol) it's finally a complete offering. Now you can play as Fake Azrael and Fake Red Hood and also Shrieking Cosplay Tara Strong. Arkham Knight (on the consoles) is also an incredibly beautiful, stormy starshine of a metropolis to fly over, still one of the most impressive vistas I've walked around this year. It has its warts under the surface, though-- the final Riddler race for Catwoman's segment made me rage harder than any game in years and I thought the lack of actual bosses was a tremendous disappointment. Shit, I can't even remember any boss battles at all, now that I think about it. You'd think they'd learn from Origins. especially when it came to drawing in new and unique villain battles (Deathstroke, Copperhead, Deadshot, Firefly) but instead you get virtually nothing. You don't even fight Man-Bat. Even Arkham City had better bosses. Even though this was one of my lower faves of the year I have to admit Rocksteady fucked up their reputation royal and the DLC they put out is laughable. I can't imagine being optimistic about what they're doing for the future. We're talking about a company who eschewed QA testing just so they could keep the identity of Arkham Knight a secret (lol) However, if you are a devout PC gamer and hate this pick, I offer an alternate one for you gearheads: Alt-?) Guilty Gear Xrd Sign: Guilty Gear Xrd finally came to PC this year. I think all the others also came to PC so there's no excuse not to own the best fighting game in the world. Please delete your Street Fighter games and only play Guilty Gear, a game with 20 thousand technical moves and actual combos. If you hate fighting games or are incapable of executing a fireball, feel free to replace this pick yet again with Invisible Inc/Galak-Z/Undertale/Dropsy or whatever other indie game is on your Macbook. 6) BLOODBORNE (PS4) Much like Witcher 3, I came into Bloodborne largely ignorant of the preceding games--in this case, the Dark Souls series. I briefly played the original D-souls game on PS3 but never stuck with it, abandoning it for other things down the line. The setting never grabbed hold of me, either; and so I ignored the DS games for years. Things changed with Bloodborne, which appealed to me largely due to the Gothic horror setting and the more aggressive sans-shield gameplay that evolved from Dark Souls. Turtling endlessly never appealed to me in Dark Souls, whereas the frantic pistol riposte and Rally mechanic in Bloodborne ensures that the most dangerous thing you can do is NOT fight. Pile the now wellknown difficulty on top and you have a very challenging task in navigating the nightmarish city of Yharnam. Bloodborne's taxing request to me, sudden deaths and all, never frustrated me--I knew to expect death and learned from it. With a bit of luck and skill, you'll be able to conquer even the most terrifying beasts, even as they tower several feet above you. Luckily, the game can also afford you the ability to connect with passing Hunters online, providing you assistance in some of the more opaque encounters and travels. Bloodborne is a very mystifying and old-school thing; it explains just the bare necessities and little else. Everything you do, including deciphering the terror of the moon, is up to you. All that's for certain is that something is quite wrong, and many morbid and celestial abominations will test you. I never felt safe in Bloodborne, and the horror aspect is something I liked even more than the Souls themes; this was more than just a medieval journey, it was a neverending struggle against a possibly celestial menace and its corrupt followers. I've read about the overlaying narrative and I'm convinced it's mostly insane ramblings that just barely thread together something about a fucking church that worshiped a cookie monster that tainted their blood to create a new baby monster but whatever--the point is that it's creepy shit and you're going to be horrified by everything from grasshopper werewolves to ugly spider babies. Bloodborne deserves credence if only because it's a freaky goddamn game, though I do wish some of the bosses were a bit less annoying and there was a tad less grinding. The complaints for Bloodborne in other areas are very trifling; it's genuinely a very well-done game with many reasons to play again with different styles and tactics. Nothing this year made my blood rush more than the madness of Bloodborne--a pact that giveth and taketh away, but the soul still burns. Bloodborne is the only game this year--and the first in maybe a decade--that I bothered to buy the beautiful strategy guide for, so that counts for something, if only because there's so much content to sift through and analyze. A TOAST TO THE MOON. 5) ROCKET LEAGUE (everything except WiiU) Rocket League, in my opinion, had the best story of any game this year. You are a rocket powered RC car that must push soccer balls into goals to save the world. It's a fantastic premise with an even better gameplay shelf life, promoting limitless possibilities and variations on the initial plot. I very much enjoyed 4v4 matches of complete moronic chaos, spamming autocorrect messages into the chatbox and diving off the walls of the arena into other cars, hopefully destroying them. Rocket League was initially a free game for its first month of release on PS4, making it The Greatest Deal of All Time 2015. If you didn't pick it up then and you had a PS4 then it's possible you're a nominee for Biggest Dumb-Dumb 2015. Rocket League is a timeless jewel; a game enjoyed in equal measures through robot AI drivers and disgustingly skilled people online. I love playing with a good group over the net just as much as I like doing Mutation matches with a square zero-g "ball." It is difficult to say why Rocket League owns so hard but the premise of a having stupid cars bop around a ball and do flippy jumps all over with their jet engines is so cool that I shouldn't have to fucking elaborate further. I'm certain I'm terrible at this game but I love it anyway and the whole world should love it, too. 4) FALLOUT 4 (PS4, XB1, PC) Fallout 4, although it is surprisingly based around the same game engine as its predecessor, manages to upturn the table that FO3 once sat at, putting an ugly horse out to pasture and breathing fresh air into Bethesda's flagship game. Although not a perfect revitalization, Fallout 4 is an incredibly satisfying upgrade that builds upon what Bethesda's been trying to create since Fallout 3. I have to admit: in the first few hours of FO4, I was not impressed at all. It took another day or so to reach the inner cloisters of the postapocalypse; the secret societies, the grand garbage cities, the army zeppelins, and the underground railroads. The joy of Fallout 3 was always in discovery and feeling a part of something after escaping from the Vault--here, not only can you establish a permanent home, but also create more meaningful alliances than in the past. In terms of the writing and story, FO4 can stumble but eventually finishes far ahead of FO3's straight-arrow plot. Some of the bigger twists and turns make mincemeat of the previous efforts, though you'd be forgiven for still thinking New Vegas was comparable (it was and still is.) FO4 makes more significant change to its guts, though--this comes not only in the form of a rudimentary Minecraft grab bag, but in exhaustive weapon mods, very fleshed out Companion system and characters, better gun controls, and a streamlined Perk system that may or may not be a negative for you. Overall, it looks a great deal better than the green and brown tinged garbageworld of mannequins, as well; it probably won't win any awards for graphics with people, but I thought Bethesda did a good job considering how godawful the previous games were. In some ways, FO4 feels like the effort that FO3 should have been--better looking, better written in areas, better realized through its various knickknack features and AI improvements. It's a logical leap forward, even if it's not a radical evolution coming from DC to Boston. It's a bit of a soft reboot, taking into consideration what you like about the past and scaling it up within reason. Despite the flaws of repetitious actions and quests, janky physics, expected Bethesda-esque bugs and grungy limtations of the housebuilding simulator, Fallout 4 can be deliriously fun to probe around in. I've had a hell of a time with the new story's eccentricities and oddball characters, and even more fun discovering all the new landmarks there are to investigate. It comfortably takes Fallout 3's place in my all-time list, which is a steep order even with FO3's endless ability to piss me off with crappy bugs, ugliness, and stupidity. There's nothing quite like these Fallout games, and FO4 is a worthy entry in this batshit crazy series of kitchen robots and cola-hoarding. It is a stupid game that you will love if you enjoyed the other games in the Bethesda: Stupid Games Anthology. 3) HELLDIVERS (PS4/3, PC) One of the first big PS4 exclusives for the majority of 2015, Helldivers kicked off the year beautifully alongside Bloodborne later on in March. Helldivers has been one of the coolest surprises in recent memory, coming out of nowhere while continuing to be relevant through a barrage of small yet fun DLC packs full of new ways to blow up bugs. It's always been engaging firing up with a 4-man team and experimenting with different loadouts, which seem to be endless in the ways they promote hazardous yet stupidly fun vigilance. Helldivers basically takes the essences of isometric topdown games like Diablo and Gauntlet and smashes it together with squad-based missions, all the while ensuring you always have a new tool to earn or upgrade from your excursions. That it is still a marvelous joy to play with multiple people is a triumph, probably only overshadowed by Rocket League's breakthrough this year. Even with the spotlight being taken by the high-octane car combat, Helldivers is still one of the best goddamn multiplayer experiences in years, and one which will only grow on Steam. It is one of the best multiplayer games ever created and if you don't think so too, choke down a cup of liber-tea, you CYBORG COMMIE. 2) METAL GEAR SOLID V: THE PHANTOM PAIN (Everything except WiiU) This is the story of a grizzled, older veteran and his neverending "take your daughter to war day," training a young superhuman sniper who can't stop humming 80's tunes. It's about a wetworks agent who somehow finds himself doing rescue missions for endangered animals by way of a flying balloon extraction system. It's the tale of a brainwashed illuminati trying to stop a younger version of itself--a version that has cropped up as a cult of personality, an army of many ideals and languages, most of the volunteers being men who were forced into accepting the love of their impudent, embittered Christ figure who routinely tortures his former friends. It's a spy flick involving Gundam mechs, psychokinetic hallucinations, and genetic engineering. It is emergent gameplay that reacts to your style, sometimes unintentionally but always entertaining. It is the legend of Big Boss, a man who cloaks himself in smoke and leaves nothing but inflatable decoys of himself surrounding a frightened and confused hostage and engages in long awkward staredowns with a burn victim who thinks he's a cross between Stephen Hawking and Zorro. This is how a fallen war hero undertakes a mission of retribution through cardboard box technology and it owns. I'm sure everyone and their mother has their own opinions about MGSV but the most pressing is addressing the nature of it as an incomplete game. However much content has been cut, I would actually rather say it is a "shattershot story" instead; the gameplay doesn't suffer to a grandiose level because of certain omissions to the narrative. The highs are high, especially with the more well-constructed stealth missions and encounters--and while the lows get tiring and boorish in terms of grinding for GMP and fighting horrid Skull bosses, the overall bell curve of the story and missions dragged me back to mainly praise in the end. Lastly, I would also say that for an incomplete product, MGSV offers much more than a grand majority of so-called complete games with shoddy framerate, poor support, and $40 DLC that has been piecemealed from the basic experience. MGSV offers itself as-is, and what it is will definitely be remembered as one of the best stealth-op action games ever conceived. And, if you're one of those pitiful fucks that really can't let go of the story being disappointing then go ahead and play MGS4 again and tell me that you wanted more of THAT shit in your current-gen MGS, you insane fucker. 1) THE WITCHER 3: WILD HUNT (PS4, XB1, PC) It's difficult to summarize something that isn't just the best game of the year, but also crosses into the threshold of one of the Best All-Time when it comes to RPGs. Having never even played the previous Witchers is testament enough for how well CDProjekt Red immerses you in the characters, the history, and the subtle politics therein. It's refreshing when your actions carry a weight that only you bear--a world of grey morals--yet still affect the land at large. The greater part of Geralt's journey is filled with humor and pathos that dumps all over BioWare's Good/Bad moral scale and brings a staggering variety of stories to finish with it. Some of the most harrowing, difficult, and poignant decisions in any RPG of played came from Witcher 3, and a majority of them came with consequence--to myself, someone else, or a nation. The core of how the game has been written, along with the reactions, goes against so many fallacies in many RPGs for the better, enabling you to feel even more attuned to how chaotic the world is. Not every feat will result in happy endings, and no failure promises oblivion. The combat, while methodical and agreeable, is but a portion of the greater scenery and awesome scale that this universe offers. CDProjekt Red deserve nothing but praise for crafting such an incredibly interactive and beautiful place to explore. More than many other games, this is a true sellsword experience; Geralt ever the drifter that comes into contact with hundreds of people who need help, whether it be ghoul extermination or simply assisting the destitute. It says a lot about the game that it reserves bigger combat scenarios, feeling comfortable enough to let the writing carry the weight. When the time comes to actually clash, some of the more exciting fights against mythical creatures are very enjoyable and something to behold. From skyloft griffins and dank hellhole fights with demogoblins to tagteaming a demon in an attic and going 1v1 with a rogue Witcher, the gameplay from combat more than holds its own when it needs to. I've poured over 100 hours into Witcher 3. It is the intoxicating "one more quest, one more excursion" that binds, but with even greater value and choices. It is nearly flawless--a masterpiece of this generation and all others before it, and will surely become the new standard for every open-world RPG that will come after. Witcher 3 now holds that enviously nigh-impossible title of raising the bar, and the future of RPGs is now better for it. ______________________________________________________________________________________________ SPECIAL EXTRA AWARDS: "THE SPECIAL EXTRA AWARDS!" Not everything can be in the hallowed Top Ten---and not everyone can win a special "Special Extra Award" award! Here are some fun little awards for extra fun special categories like Coolest Macaroni, or Lamest Sock Drawer in a JRPG. BEST WASTE OF TIME: Marvel Heroes 2015/2016 Marvel Heroes is a huge waste of time, and my Steam account says I wasted 120 hours or so on this stupid fucking game. It's basically Diablo but with Marvel shit, and 60 different characters along with 300 different item systems. It's extremely newbie nonfriendly so good luck trying to understand what every currency and artifact even does. I've basically spent about 50 or so bux on this otherwise free game, mainly because I loved buying new heroes and didn't want to wait to save up my ingame currency for them, and I also loved taking advantage of 2 for1 deals or stupid worthless costumes for my make-believe Spiderman. Over time, Marvel Heroes and David Brevik (former Diablo 2 head honcho) have added even more shit, and with the 2016 update that allows controller support (finally, a solution for my chronic carpal tunnel pain from all clicky games) the game will be even more widespread. God knows adding a controller with Reaper of Souls did Diablo 3 wonders, too. If you love to waste time with clicky Diablo shit but always wished your Necromancer character was Dr. Doom instead, then get Marvel Heroes. You'll be glad you did! BEST COMEBACK FROM ILL INTENT: Assassin's Creed: Syndicate Ubisoft did itself a huge disservice by refusing to name this game Blackjack Limey Syndicate, because the AC surname is more a bane than a boon. After a lifetime of open-world retreads and a horrific entry in Unity last year, Ubisoft really had its work cut out for them in their next yearly installment of Everyone's Favorite Assassin Game. But, could it even be salvaged, when Shadow Of Mordor ate its lunch last year and Phantom Pain escalated the stealth genre so much? Surprisingly, I've had loads of fun with Syndicate so far, and a lot is owed not only to Ubisoft's Quebec studios wresting control from their Montreal-based Unity brethren, but the rollicking good time of industrious Londontown. The stealth gameplay has actually reached an apex now, making it necessary to actually be careful about your location--and if all fails, the combat is the most intense and brutal the series has ever been. Not only that, but the traversal's new grappling rope system is very fun to utilize, and doesn't completely invalidate your standard parkour and freeform climbing around the smoky rooftops of England. In terms of how this looks and performs compared to Unity's glitchfest of pop-in and chugging frames, the world of late-1800s London is beautiful and remarkably consistent; I can count maybe 2 seconds of slowdown while racing on busy streets with my GTA horse and buggy in several hour of playtime. To tell you the truth, I'm stunned at how smooth the experience is, even when I'm gouging some poor fucker's eyes out. Sure, it looks good, but what about the bog-standard Ubisoft content and presentation? If there's one thing we can be thankful for, it's an utter abberation of Uplay bullshit or DLC reminders. Ubisoft clearly wants to play the sad puppydog eyes at us after Unity's massive failings, leading to a purer sense of immersion--one not broken up with "buy 100 helix points, you twat." As far as the content goes, I'm having fun just leading my gangs of Rooks into dragout fights, ascending clock towers for fucking Alexander Graham Bell, and exploring all the little nuances that new assassin and infiltration missions offer. It's AC stuff, sure--but it reminds me more of the magic I felt way back in AC2. I've only ever played Ezio's first adventure, along with maybe half of AC4's pirate sailing sim, so maybe I'm far less burnt out on this whole thing. Even so, I did miss the old atmosphere of AC2, and this feels like a huge reformation--the way Assassin's Creed should have progressed in terms of locomotion, battles, skillsets, and scaleof the world. It's been a year of a great many open world experiences, with Witcher 3 being the top of the heap and things like Batman, Mad Max, and Xenoblade bringing up the rear. AC Syndicate, though, brings quite a different scope from the stormy ransacked metropolis of Gotham or the endless void of Mad Max. It's easy, as always to be fatigued by open-world checklists and useless hubs--but after not visiting this zone of gameplay for years now, Syndicate scratches an itch for an atmosphere of being a secret idiot ninja assassin in an otherwise realistic world of dumbbbells that I have missed for a long, long time. BEST SOUNDS: MGSV: The Phantom Pain Although I loved all the music from Witcher 3, it didn't have the option to chop goblins in half while Kids In America blared in the background. Finally, a game where I can shoot up a base to the tune of The Final Countdown, or descend from a chopper as Rebel Yell squeals over the speakers. Additionally, MGSV has the best sounds largely due to most of the story being played on cassette tapes. If you ever felt like the narrative of previous MGS games ate into your gameplay time, fear not! Now, you essentially have MGS5: Books On Tape Edition! Just listen to groundbreaking plot twists and important insider info at your leisure while you infiltrate bases and take showers with your weird parasitic teammates. In all seriousness though, the work done on the tapes--especially the "Truth Tapes" at the tail end with Major Zero--are extremely well produced. It's a bit of a shame so many were relegated to merely audio tapes, but for what we got, it was very well done. BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT: Evolve Please see the enclosed review in my previous post for a wonderful review! BEST DOG: D.D. from MGSV It's a tough call between Dogmeat from Fallout 4 and the random dog NPCs from Witcher, but DD is clearly the best dog of them all. Marking all known hostages and enemies in a map? Fultoning people from afar with his mountain-dog balloon pouch? Having the most adorable puppy paw pads!? DD has it all. You can even change his fur and fake eye appearance, which doesn't bother DD in the slightest. WHAT A GOOD BOY. The fact that he was raised by Revolver "Shalashaska" "Adamska" "Liquid" Ocelot just makes him even cooler. Thank you, Kojima....thank you for your dogly goodness. BEST NEW CHARACTER: Bart the Rock Troll, Witcher 3 Honestly, all the rock trolls from Witcher 3 could have made this list--from the 3 that wanted to have new clothes, to the childlike dumbbell who just wants to paint pretty pictures and help the army. I love rock trolls so much that when on a mission to discover what happened to lost miners, I outright told the mayor "yeah they bothered a rock troll and died and it's your fault idiot, should have not bothered a troll." Man, the mayor was fucking PISSED and called me good for fucking nothing. But you know what, I was safe in the knowledge that I had protected the GOOD AND INNOCENT ROCK TROLL. Rock trolls are great, but you never forget your first Rock Troll, and mine was Bart. The simple-minded guard for Dijkstra's vault, he won hearts and minds alike with his gentle demeanor and honest hard work. If you killed Bart later on in the encounter with Phillipa, then you're a piece of shit who deserves all the maladies available in the modern world. MOST/LEAST DIRE DECISION MAKING: Witcher 3 + Fallout 4 Both of these games have major arcs that require you to make some important choices. One of the longest amounts of time I've ever spent on a game choice was early in the Witcher 3 (or early by lenient standards, since this is like 100 hours long). Deliberating whether or not to permit a colleague's vengeance on a seemingly innocent, reformed man was compounded by all the facts that had been offered and the journey I'd been on to reach this point. There were many more situations that followed this one, due in part to Witcher 3's stellar writing and characters. On the other hand, when I accidentally agreed to betray one faction in Fallout 4 and join the neo-natiolist Brotherood, I shrugged and said "oh, well." My girlfriend was pissed the entire night as she watched me slaughter the Railroad friends who had put their faith and trust in me. In Fallout, one well-meaning faction ultimately has to suffer the most, so it's really a crapshoot when deciding how to go about the endgame. Surely I could have reverted back to a previous save, but I figured fuck it and froze Deacon into a popsicle with my Cryo gun. The characters and storylines in Fallout 4 are good, but overall this is still a classic Bethesda sillyworld full of goofy logic and incomparable morons. I felt immersed, yeah; but I also never really pondered many things more than a few seconds. BEST BOSS: Father from Fallout 4 Sure, I could have put any random shmuck from Bloodborne and called it a day, but that'd be too easy. Instead, I'd like to note the intense satisfaction I felt as I infiltrated the Institute and confronted this helpless fucker. Don't bother telling me how disappointed you are in me, dude--keep your worthless platitudes and eat shit. The nerve of this kidnapping, robot-implanting fuck to throw shade on me while I've got the nukes? I shot his face off and then stole his clothes, leaving him not only dead but possibly full of postmortem embarrassment. That's #fallout, baby. BEST ENDING: MGSV: The Phantom Pain I'm sure this will boil quite a few pisspots, but when you take into account the themes of identity, of creating a cult of personality and a legend, the definition of the "player" role in games and how YOU have literally created the legend that has now come to an end, there was no better way to simultaneously kick you in the balls while thanking the playerbase for helping to bring the Big Boss to power. It remains one of the biggest fuck you moments in quite some time for me, and I loved that. Maybe Witcher 3 has a better ending but as of this writing, I haven't even seen it. (lol) If this is the last breath of Kojima's Metal Gear, then this was the final step needed to happen--the unmaking of the legend. BEST MULTIPLAYER: Helldivers Helldivers is a game where you can "accidentally" kill your teammates while driving a giant ED-209 and calling down constant carpetbomb runs and barbedwire traps. It is also a game that lets you pistolwhip a random pubbie to death at mission's end in revenge for his imcompetence, leaving him behind to die as you fly off in your dropship. Pure bliss. BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT, PART DEUX: Just Cause 3 So confident was I in my crowning of JC3 as this year's "dark horse" for super secret GOTY that I preordered it, DIGITALLY, on the PS4. Much like all the lucky kids who bought Batman on PC, playing JC3 on a console guarantees naught but frustration with load times, online leaderboard spam, and godawful framerates when explosions happen. Explosions; the very crux of the whole fucking game. Imagine my displeasure when most of the fun mods in the game are also locked behind boring, janky challenges that ever-so-slowly build up your gear mod levels. For a game that was insistent on bumping up the fun dial, it sure gated a lot of that fun behind unneeded busywork and then slathered it all with a thick coat of Not-Done-Yet. JC3 is a huge fucking disappointment to me in limitless ways, most of all because it's such a sign of the times. Games can just get released with shit framerate and unfathomable load times in the year of our Lord 2015, with almost zero repurcussions. Even a studio like Avalanche can just get away with fucking us all over. Videogames are sometimes just a shit hobby with a shit community and a shit plethora of shit developers, and JC3 was one of those experiences that turned up that cynicism to 11. Worst of all is that I can't return a digital copy, so fuck you JC3 for putting one over on me and renewing my desire to sell all my consoles. BEST ALMOST-FINISHED EARLY ACCESS GAME: Darkest Dungeon I wrestled with whether or not I should put this game on my initial top 10, but figured I'd play it safe and part with an "almost got 'em" slot. Darkest Dungeon is an RPG with some amazingly unique qualities, not to mention a spectacular presentation and atmosphere. Its initial build was to die for--but as time waned on through the year, the developers tinkered with a great many values that have left some out in the cold. Originally billed as a very punishing and grim engine, Darkest Dungeon has waffled between challenging and just plain bullshit at times. Deep down, there is a truly fantastic RPG here; a month away from its official release, things could change for the slightly better, as well. Darkest Dungeon toes a very thin line now, one that expects you to accept that your characters can and will lose their minds--and perhaps their lives, eventually. There is a cycle of new recruits and new wars that I have indeed accepted, and it just makes the triumphs all the more exciting when your team (or most of it) comes out of a battle intact. Look for Darkest Dungeon's official release in Jan-Feb for how this turns out. I remain cautiously optimistic that the final build will still be a wildly chaotic ride, but not obnoxiously so. [Update: right as I finished this, Darkest Dungeon had in fact put forth a huge holiday update that not only offers more options to toggle on or off in terms of difficulty, but also puts forth a bounty of fixes and tweaks that are going to greatly improve the combat. A good number of things I've mentioned, included the Death's Door debuff, has been addressed and now we're looking at a much better--but still thrilling--adventure into decrepit misfortunes. It's already on my shortlist for 2016's Top Ten, for what it's worth.) BEST MARIO MAKER: Mario Maker BEST WEAPON/ITEM: Inflatable Decoy from MGSV The ability to fool enemies from afar with a weird inflatable mimic of you--complete with voice capabilities--is incredibly emblematic of how delightfully insane MGS really is. I loved surrounding entire squads with phantom (heh) representations of my character, confusing and frightening all the other militia. If only I could do this in reality. MOST LETHAL MURDERER: UNDERTALE Undertale is perhaps the most savage game on the list if only because it kills off all those shitty RPG games you held dear. I backed off a bit on this game because people would never shut the fuck up about it, to be honest; it got to the point where I deliberately held off on playing for a while because I was fatigued hearing about the wonderful and charming rpg battle system where you give peace a chance and make friends with everyone happily ever after and here is my personal headcanon about skeletons. It's probably definitely an unfair way to judge something but what can I say, I'm a bitter fucker by nature. I applaud the bullet hell combat and the wacky writing but it's a first that I can stop and question "why do I want this random thing dead" instead of hammering an Attack button. The puzzles are awful boring things to simply squirm out of and there's still a lot of boring random ecounters, but the characters and bosses still make it a shitload better than "INCREDIBLE RETURN TO FORM RPG, BRAVELY DEFAULT" which is saying A LOT. So, my congratulations to an RPG that actually did something new instead of catering to the whims of people who want to simply go for that "old school" appeal, which is a euphamism for "a colossally bad fucking game involving random encounters and endless grinding of newbie fodder enemies." We need more games like this, which offer alternatives to the constant tedium of grinding for levels so your autoattack does more points. That you can finish this game without any levels and still get by with a modicum of skill and brains is better than FF7 ever offered. Shit, if you can make Final Fantasy look bad, then I'll buy Undertale 2, as well. I won't tear up and write a 5000 word essay about how this made me think of my childhood or made me believe in Jesus Christ again but I welcome any and all diversity in the "classic RPG" scheme of things. Thank you Undertale for helping kill off lesser RPGs with a great deal of DETERMINATION. BIGGEST X-FACTOR: The Narrator, from Darkest Dungeon Sometimes, that little extra dash of spice and salmon salts can really bring out the flavor of an already-great experience. The narration by Wayne June in Darkest Dungeon brings an unbelievable feel to the story and the circumstances. In my lowest of lows, he expressed gloom and inevitable destruction; but when a hero is about to stress out and instead becomes Virtuous, his words of triumph brought out such elation and confidence. "These monsters CAN be fought. They CAN be beaten" at the fall of every invading force is the rallying cry that spurns you on, even as countless heroes die off and leave behind only an echo of their purpose. WORST PUZZLES: The Riddler Riddles in Arkham Knight / All of Undertale I'm fine with puzzles, but most of them in games these days really suck. None of them are as obnoxious or overcooked as the fucking Riddler shit in Arkham Knight, because this is the 4th goddamn time we've had this pop up. These were sort of novel in the first game, but it was taken to an obscenely annoying level for the next 3 iterations of Batman. You'd have to be fucking insane to keep tracking and collecting all these things; by the latest game, I just said "fuck off, Riddler" and did only the base riddle sections to free Catwoman. Even those were the worst part of the game, and there' no way I'm going to sit around with a GameFAQ like a dickhead trying to collect all these stupid trophies. What do you get for your troubles? An actual boss fight with Riddler's big mech. Fuck that, and fuck you Rocksteady for giving us the same insanity litmus test 4 times in a row. On a minor note, I'd also like to say the "puzzles," for Undertale are so rock bottom that they might not even qualify as such. The first wonderful example is early on in the game, wherein you keep falling down holes for 8 or 9 times in random spots in the floor. I wanted to strangle the developer for this. Whatever else comes after is the most bare-bones shit that I have to wonder what the point of them even were. Every puzzle section could have been replaced with more cute dog bosses or wacky hijinx that permeates the rest of the story. Instead I have to push buttons for 2 minutes and then find some other button a minute later. Please do not put puzzles in games with random battles, either, you fucking clowns. That's like trying to play checkers but repeatedly needing to take out an overflowing garbage bin every 30 seconds. WORST ENDING: FO4 People have already talked about the weaknesses regarding story and narrative in this game. Welp, hope you didn't think joining one of the factions actually had a giant effect on the ending, which is like two fucking minutes long. It might actually be the worst ending I've played in years. Good thing it's more about the other incidental storylines and journeys within, because god damn what the fuck, man. BEST 2-DAY GAME: Until Dawn I'm legit happy that Supermassive's big horror game got the chance to shit all over David Cage's nonsense and show everyone what a real cinematic quicktime-event laden game should be. Until Dawn surprised me with how beautiful the graphics were, as well as how truly entertaining the experience was; however, there was no way I was going to buy it full price, especially after I had rented and finished it in 2 nights. I know there's technically other choices you can make but I felt satisfied with the path I had taken. If you get the chance to play this at a reduced or rented price, I highly recommend it. BEST GAME I WISH I COULD PLAY BUT I SUCK SO GODDAMN MUCH AT IT SO I CAN'T EVEN RECOMMEND IT FOR ANYTHING: Invisible, Inc I fucking love Klei. Hell, Mark Of The Ninja is one of VERY few games I'd consider nearly flawless. You'd think my love of tactics, stealth games, and Klei would mean Invisible Inc is a shoe-in for a GOTY, right? Not quite. It's just really too bad that I have the worst luck imaginable in every mission, somehow fucking up even in early stages. I did in fact reach the last mission just once, and was promptly fucked up due to only having 1 bullet in one gun. I'm going to keep trying and bumping the difficulty options down because I REALLY want to enjoy this awesome stealth-tactics games, but ho boy I cannot catch a break no matter how many rewinds I endure. Invisible Inc is an awesome game that would have otherwise made my Top 10 easily based on the mechanics and aesthetics--it's just not a game I've have tons of fun with yet due to my ineptitude, shit luck, and whatever else is cursing me to really bad runthroughs. BEST ENDING TO A GAME I REALLY DIDN'T WANT TO PLAY: Soma I have zero interest in games like Amnesia, Penumbra, and Soma--something about hiding helplessly in a corner from clumsy antagonists bores the shit out of me and makes me wish I could have just experienced the great story of Soma unfettered. Knowing fully well that I'd get fatigued by this gameplay in Soma, I spoiled the plot and ending for myself and oh boy, is it a doozy. If you actually like that sort of gameplay, then knock yourself out because the narrative in this one looks to be well worth the ride. UNLUCKIEST GAME IN 2015: Mad Max Mad Max: Mad Max is the unluckiest game in the world. It was bad enough that a game in-development now had to live up to the sudden expectations from a brainmelting film revitalization, but to come out on the same goddamn day as Metal Gear was the kiss of death. Add to this that the supposed "better" Avalanche game, Just Cause 3, was coming in December, and you have a recipe for "best purely average game of the year." Mad Max, to be fair, is a very honest and brutal depiction of a complete fucking wasteland: it's a world of swirling dirt, sparse living space, clanky junkyard kingdoms, sparse ammo, and murder. It's a very sparse game littered with "Ubisoft-lite" checklist objectives; crush this sign here, collect a thing here, invade and completely fuck up a base for influence, wash rinse repeat. We've seen this formula before, and we've even seen the combat before, too--from another Warner Bros release, the Arkham series. But unlike Batman or Assassin's Creed, Mad Max is just hopeless and brutal. The combat is definitely a great deal more dependant on real momentum and the weight of your body--you aren't Batman and you will pay dearly for thinking you can buttonmash. Fighting is a dogged, determined, and sloppy. You will break necks with German suplexes and stomp faces into crud. Everything from the grind of driving against enemy vehicles to falling deep into some kind of nightmarish Zelda dungeon of despair is a fight against rabid followers of Rictus Erectus or some other fucked-up gaslord. And yet, under the brutality is a beautiful wreck, as the optimization and graphics options for Mad Max are fantastic. Not only does it look and feel great, but you're able to change the filters in gameplay to some incredible shades of bloody sunsets and backwashed orange. I only ever play Mad Max in bursts, mostly when I want to relax and experience a chilled-out world of dust devils, blowing through some strongholds and screaming through the white-spackled desert at midnight in the Magnum Opus. It's a strangely endearing game, one which borrows bits and pieces from other open world experiences but gives itself plainly as an utter tribute to what a grim apocalypse is really like. While Fallout expresses this time period as one of art deco robotics and bizarre mutated monsters, Mad Max is more of an exposed bone, yellowed over yet fascinating to examine. BEST FAKE DIABLO: Victor Vran If Diablo 3 was too complex for you, I have good news: Victor vran is a PC game that condenses all that shit to 3 basic skills per weapon, plus the odds and ends of various potions, an equippable Overdrive attack, and passive boosts to whatever else. Victor Vran is more or less the bitesize Diablo, complete with bounties and quests for each area you're dipped into. Did you ever wish you could pointlessly jump around in Diablo, or even walljump on a few things??? Victor Vran has you covered there. Wished that Diablo 3 incorporated the smooth, sexy sandpaper voice of Geralt into your character? VICTOR VRAN HAS DOUG COCKLE AS THE VOICE OF VICTOR VRAN. All in all, this is a fun little hacknslash morsel that keeps you interested, even if many enemies are skellytens that keep getting up after you put them down. If you accidentally bought Victor Vran in the Steam holiday sales, NEVER FEAR: This is A Good Game. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Welp, that's it for 2015! Sorry if I missed out on a few things--stuff like Dying Light or Tomb Raider escaped me for a good long while. Splatoon is probably the biggest glaring omission here; I'm embarrassed to say that although I love it I only got the chance to play a few times, and for some reason my WiiU fucking refuses to connect to the internet for Splatoon, which makes me sad and angry. Otherwise I'm sure that would have been #10 instead of a fucking cat simulator.
Just for laughs, let's quickly recap my Top 10 of 2015 predictions earlier this year: 1) Bloodborne 2) Mortal Kombat X 3) Zelda 4) Xenoblade Chronicles X 5) No Man's Sky 6) Codename STEAM 7) Splatoon 8) Batman: Arkham Knight 9) The Witcher 3 10 MGS 5: the Phantom Pain Not too bad, though I really overshot with Zelda/No Man's Sky and boy did I strike out with Codename STEAM. What a stinker. Let's try this again and put one down for 2016: 1) Mirror's Edge Catalyst 2) Deus Ex: Mankind Divided 3) Fire Emblem Fates 4) Uncharted 4 5) Final Fantasy XV 6) No Man's Sky 7) The Last Guardian 8) Hitman 9) Zelda 10) Dishonored 2 Shit, this doesn't even cover XCOM 2, DOOM, Horizon: Zero Dawn, Mass Effect Andromeda, Star Fox Zero, and Hyper Light Drifter. 2015 may have been the year of 3rd-person open world games and RPGS, but 2016 looks like a strong pushback for 1st-person games of wildly different calibers--DX, Mirror's Edge, and Dishonored leading the pack, being sequels to 3 of my all-time favorite games. I think 2016 is going to be even more incredible. Games are fun, consoles are hitting their stride, Steam refund is our savior safeguard against shit, and Fire Emblem is coming back. HERE'S TO 2016, COMRADES. I feel safe in saying that Evolve is the biggest fuckup of 2015. And what an irony in saying this, due to the fact that Evolve was initially my big reason for getting a PS4 in the first place--I didn't own a gaming PC and wouldn't for a very long time, so a next-gen solution was my only ticket. Of course, even that would be messy, since the release date was pushed back a few more months into 2015. So, I waited with rampant anticipation, and why not? It had swept the E3 Meaningless Awards buzz, received praise and excitement due to its original concept: 4 class-based hunters playing cat and mouse with a gargantuan monster. A team-based shooter with hunting and tracking mechanics, while the monster was a constantly-evolving boss creature that either stalked in the shadows or momentarily engaged in frightful combat. It was the ultimate "be the boss" game, and destined to be a great big-game hunting experience to boot. What could go wrong? Well, plenty could--and did. The first real sign that things were shaky was the initial beta testing of Evolve on PS4. Not only were connections and matchmaking kind of slow, but it was becoming clear how truly dependant you were on your team as a whole. Teamwork-based shit isn't bad at all, but when all it takes for a loss is one guy to fuck up his role a little bit, the arduous process of losing and matchmaking all over again gets tedious. There are 4 main classes in Evolve, with 3 or 4 character variants each: assault, support, medic, and trapper. You fuck up as a trapper with your encapsulating dome, you never will get the drop on a monster ever.Your assault sucks, you won't get damage off. Your medic gets toasted, and you can kiss your ass goodbye. There are a number of respawn timers, of course--but you have to be careful not to get blown up in a single fight. Letting the monster eat stuff and evolve its powers makes the endgame less possible for the hunters victory. Sometimes you get a dumb person playing the monster, trap them, and kill them in 2 minutes. Other times you'll spend 15 minutes running in circles until the "endgame" scenario of a round starts, where the fully-grown monster has to destroy a reactor for its victory. You'll probably get instances where there are intermittent scrimmages, sure--but it's more likely you don't. Overall, the theory and idea of hunting monsters using scared wildlife, corpses, and your mutant dog friend is fun, but it gets old when certain aforementioned scenarios play out very often. You could be doing fucking nothing for almost half an hour before the inevitable battle royale. As for the hunters themselves, they're interesting and varied enough. Some of them are clearly better than others--the trapper with a sniffer dog will definitely help dumber hunters track the monster easier than the others. Some of the supports are just too unwieldy next to the one who can shield you constantly. With medics, at least you have a very varied roster of snipers, resurrection summoner dude, and standard heal-o-matic. Assault characters will usually let you choose between mine throwers, flame guy, rocket launchers and chain guns, so pick your poison and you'll usually be good to go. Their balance isn't the best but they're all worthwhile picks. If only the DLC price gate wasn't so shitty--but more on that later. Playing as the monster is usually fun. I wish they could have taken the monster and the controls for it and put it in a different game because it's smooth and excellent. Everything from jumping and climbing to flamebreath and stealth moves are great, and it feels cool to pounce on someone from the underbrush or throw a huge boulder at the hunters. There are 4 monsters, if I recall corrrectly--I only ever played as the giant gargoyle dude and the Cthulu terror, as I had not unlocked one and did not pay 15 fucking dollars for the other. Monster balance seemed odd since one in particular could float and teleport and drop lightning homing bombs on you and I hated that fucker. But, as I said before, playing as a monster was fun for a while--until the ennui of the same old scenario sets in. There are some other scenarios available. One involved waves of smaller enemies while hunters try and protect a thing. Another was basically trying to kill monster nests before a monster hatches more shit. To be honest, these alt modes weren't all that great. What was better were the Modifiers in the standard hunt mode, wherein you could do something like set the weather, create 2 monsters to hunt, utilize your spaceship as a giant additional searchlight, and more. There were a few of these variants but you could only choose 1 at a time, which I fucking hated. Why not just let me go wild and have like 2 or even 3 at once? Anything to break up the one fucking mode. In Team Fortress 2, you had dozens upon dozens of maps; you had not only 9 classes with limitless weapon loadout options and cosmetics, but match types like KOTH, Capture Points, Capture Flags, Payload, Payload Race, Special Delivery, Man Vs Machine, and Attack/Defend. These were spread across wildly different locations and schematics and never felt like you were doing the same shit. I know, different kind of team-based game, but my point stands because Evolve locks you into very specific roles across a small variance of maps and architectures. Games almost always begin and end the same way, and always have the same kind of midgame shenanigans of domes, tracking, and eating wildlife. What sounded and looked good on paper was done to the bare minimum. Now, all of this taken into consideration would probably be enough for me to say "it's like a 6/10 game or something" due to a lack of enough content. But the shit train for Evolve doesn't even start until we touch the toxic fumes of its DLC model. Initially the most controversial aspect of the game, Evolve had offered a huge season pass that included things like worthless skins, character unlocks, and a future monster. For $25, you get 4 new hunters that otherwise would have been $7.50 each. Add to this a new monster that's worth $15 fucking dollars, only free if you bought the dumbass $80 deluxe edition. I'm not even counting the $60 worth of tiny cosmetic DLC things for your guns and weapons which all look like crap anyway--you can barely see shit like that in such a dark game. This pricing comes with the fact that all of it was announced way before release, raising red flags about how much content was either cut or being hung out to dry. In a game where the content is already quite sparse, there's another $40 worth within 4 hunters and a monster. The game brand-new was $60, making this a $100 purchase if you wanted 5 more characters to play in the same old hunting mode. This was exploitative horseshit, especially because it was announced so early and dangled around in light of a very bare bones selection of play modes. Add to this fact that another season pass was announced for 2016 containing just as much bullshit, and you have a laughtrack effort. Against my better judgment, I had purchased Evolve but soon traded it back in. I probably wasn't the only one--not only on console, but on PC the player base nosedived into hilariously low numbers. Since it launched in February 2015, the numbers show the shockingly low amount of people still playing. Even in March, people were already moving on. Perhaps funniest of all was a recent contest Turtle Rock did: if there were enough arena hunter wins, everyone would earn 16 free skins. It fell short of the mark by maybe 20k wins and there were no free skins handed out. That's a great picture not only of how shitty Turtle Rock is with their PR and generosity, but also how much the install base has dwindled. Evolve is like a bad dream that I've blacked out from remembering and only look back upon in disgust. For such a heavily anticipated thing, it crashed spectacularly and probably lies within the same graveyard as The Order 1886. It's yet another early 2015 release that will become forgotten as the rising tide of good shit enters for the holidays. It will only ever be relevant as a failed experiment in terms of both initial ideas and how DLC can completely fuck over a game's entire release. Compare (as I love to do) The Witcher 3's model of release with Turtle Rock's.W3 continuously released minor knick knacks and features for free in the months following its arrival, while promising a huge expansion of the game world later in the year for less than a 3rd of the original price. Evolve sold every tiny bit of scrap for 2 dollars or more apiece and gave away nothing, gating even your progress behind tedious time and money schemes. Fuck you, Turtle Rock. The only thing that evolved was the bullshit scheme they had for the consumers, giving the absolute minimal while asking for the maximum monetary grant. Fuck Evolve; it is the worst AAA release of 2015 and I'm sure Ubisoft is pleased that someone beat them to that for once. After god-knows how many hours of trekking around the world for clues in the story's main questline, I finally arrived in the frozen isles of Skellige--this game's interpretation of a borderline Norse/Scots warrior's land. Upon arriving, I was immediately accosted by an inlander, angered for some odd reason. rather than continue to reason with this dude, I immediately decided to whip his ass. What ensued was a quick and bloody murder, not only cutting apart this hapless native but his faithful dog companion, as well. In a matter of seconds, I thought, "shit, what have I done?" He probably wasn't really a bad guy, and neither was his buddy. It was deaths like this--deaths that took place virtually unseen on a frigid shore of shipwrecks and scuttled cargo--that would haunt me the most, mainly because they carried no immediate repercussion. You're a superhuman hunter who is respected by some and feared by most, trying your best just to find one or two of the only people on earth you give a shit about. There's no karma system to baby you or stupid little popups to tell you "YOU DID A BAD." You have to live with your decisions, which may or may not branch out into things that effect the world at large. Another similar dilemma occurred as I agreed to help a brother-in-arms--a fellow Witcher named Lambert who was out for revenge. He wanted a certain man dead for supposedly assassinating a close friend, and after a dutiful adventure looping from one place to the next I had found my man. This person in particular told a different story: of a clumsy Witcher that had bungled a contract and went rogue, necessitating a punishment to put him down. This man was now reformed, had a family, and just wanted to put the weary threads of the past away. I was faced with the decision of whether or not to allow Lambert justice by way of the blade. I have to admit, it was the longest I have ever lingered on a single decision in any game before. I was either going to put a good man's fate in the hands of a deadly individual, or risk the friendship and camaraderie of one of Geralt's only confidantes. The result of the decision surprised me, of course--as The Witcher 3 often does with its absolutely stellar characters and writing. I don't know shit about the Witcher series except that it's about a genetically altered monster slayer and it's apparently Poland's greatest export to the world. Witcher 3, since early previews and the "literally 200 hours of content" claims, had been steadily gaining traction in the last year or so. With many people (myself included) feeling short-changed by 2014's multiplat offerings (Nintendo gets a pass for 2014 due to overall excellence), W3 developed into a kind of "chosen one" to circumvent all the lazy crap we had experienced. Bloodborne, to an extent, was just as hyped, but for all the poor plebs that only owned an Xbox or a PC, Witcher 3 was the next best thing. Just like Dragon Age's latest foray, I intended to jump in to a third entry in a series I had never experienced before. Well, 80 hours and 2 goddamn system iterations later, I have my sufficient impressions. Short answer would be that the game is very good and very engrossing, but also very potentially taxing to play optimally. The long answer is going to be me telling you why this game is a fucking masterpiece. Let me preface this by saying that, like Dishonored, I bought the console version of this game and hated it. Not only were the graphics a bit downsized on Day One, but the framerate...for fuck's sake, that framerate. Now, things may have probably been patched for the better since then, but on day-one with a day-one patch already in the wings, this game ran like shit. It was a jittery mess and I doubt that it was hardlocked to 30FPS; normally I'm never a stickler of framerates but this was beyond awful. When your game runs at 26fps or lower for a majority of the time, the quality of the experience suffers a lot. Shit, Shadow Of Mordor was locked in at 30FPS and never faltered once--the game looked and felt beautiful. With Witcher 3, however, the initial concessions made to put this beast on consoles were just too much for me. Lucky for me I had recently upgraded my laptop to a dedicated entry-level gaming rig. Although it was souped up to play most recent games well, I doubted if I could even play W3--it was, after all, the "new Crysis 3." This was the new benchmark for if your machine was worth a shit. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I could run W3 on mainly all high settings, and with a nice fullscreen resolution. To tell you the truth, I'm stunned; framerate is regularly 38 to 45, with very rare dips into 31-29 in a few instances. Compare this to the constant stuttering on the PS4 I had and you have my official warning that the entry to this wonderful game may be quite demanding. If you're fine with the console versions, that's cool--but for those of you who need that level of stability in visuals and motion, you might have to rethink your purchase or take a look at your hardware specs. Myself, I only had an nVidia 960m 2GB card, though backed up by an i7 with 16GB of RAM. This is, by all means, still a very entry-level laptop and I was still able to run this bad boy at a very acceptable clip. This is, of course, providing you're fine with setting at High Quality, with only shadows and water at a moderately lower texture resolution. Since I've wasted so much space with bullshit techtalk, I might as well talk about the visuals. Simply put, they're gorgeous; just walking around and taking in the sunsets, moonbeams, constant weather effects and windy plains is wondrous. W3 has probably some of the most impressive areas constructed in games to date, the design putting Mordor and Inquisition to shame. The sheer quality of character faces and expressions is commendable, as are the fluid motions and animations in general. It's a really, really pretty game to look at, even with the outcries of downgrades trying to stifle the wonder and awe at every location. The draw distance in particular is amazing, with distant locations and traveling NPCs visible as far as you can see. Pop-in is exceedingly rare here, espousing the holy grail of "if you can see it, you can get to it." This is as good a place as any to segue into talking about how much there is to see and do; compared to Inquisition, there's no contest. Just for comparison, when I played Inquisition I was mainly wandering through very empty and dull spaces, trying in vain to navigate poorly-constructed mountains or hills, getting pissed off at the terrible platforming and general malaise of exploring. When you get a quest, you just go and collect a thing, or several things--those fucking shards, most likely. You collect a thing over and over for people you don't even care about. You're the Herald of Andraste, for fuck's sake; why are you collecting sheep wool? Compare this to Witcher's system of easily moving through your surroundings, actually having a platforming aspect worth a shit, and a variety of different cities, settlements, towns, and spookhouses. Every quest matters in Witcher 3, and sometimes you'll go through a variety of steps and sequences and research before reaching the climactic end. You get supremely involved in every character's story, leading to all kinds of battles and Witcher contracts. Sure, most of them will inevitably lead to some kind of physical conflict, but the content peppered along the way has been sublime. There's a few formulas like Witcher-detective sense looking and monster research that get used often, but the locations and options for seeing things through are varied enough to keep every mission feel fresh. Some missions are humorous, some delving into Lovecraftian horrors, others dealing with domestic issues and exorcisms. It's a far cry from the "here's your mission, collect or kill a thing, and you get points" system in Inquisition, which got boring, impersonal, and bland. Quests are especially important in W3 since they're also the only real source of experience points, too. Some of the best items are received through off-track missions, as well--and I rarely ventured off the path to a sum of zero. Exploring in this game actually rewards you with so much, whether it's a new checkpoint, rare treasures, new NPCs to see, or elite fights. That I was in the 2nd and 3rd areas at 30 hours and barely completed 20% of this area--in a game with likely 5 or 6 more huge areas to explore--is very impressive. Equally impressive is how the story never really punishes you for expressing an opinion or a decision. In Inquisition, every fucking choice was met with a slew of "Dorian agrees, Solas disagrees, Fartface agrees" dragging across the bottom of the screen. You were told immediately if something you did or said was conducive or detrimental to your standing with others. There is no Conversation Wheel in Witcher 3; there are no set values to your dialogue or action choices. You do what you want, and the world changes--for better or worse. So you've got all these missions and storylines, but how's the actual play? Well, one way I'd describe it would be "high-octane Dark Souls in miniature, deluxe." By that I mean the combat is methodical, requires precision, and can decimate you quickly. It's standard lite/heavy attack/parry fare with your various sign magic thrown in, as well as crossbow or bombs for good measure. However, your fights will vary in deadliness depending on how often you consult your bestiary and see what each creature's weakness is. Doing a bit of reading can change the game for you, so being prepped with the right magic or potion is a must for some of the bigger bosses offered up. My experiences with these mechanics have been mixed, but mainly on the positive side. Playing on the Hard difficulty (Blood and Broken Bones) was taxing at the start but rewarding when I got into a good groove. It's the kind of combat where 3 enemies is tough, 4 is a chore, and anything above this on the same plain will be hellish for you (at least until you begin to vastly outlevel your opponents late in the game). Enemies don't take turns; this isn't Arkham City. Early in the game, you'll get fucked up if you charge into engagements like a moron, and rightly so. Luckily, you have a decent arsenal of support magic available--melting armor, blanking brains, or creating a shield to absorb a hit will serve you well, especially when you start leveling these magics up to do a variety of different effects. You might want your fire spell to focus on melting armor, or you might utilize a spell tree wherein it becomes a constant flamethrower. The skill tree thus far is varied enough to offer some neat playstyles, but how many you can equip depends on your level. And boy, does leveling take a while. Overall, after 60 hours or so getting used to the combat, I'm satisfied with it. It takes some brainpower to make use of your skills in the best way possible, and you're given ample options to customize what your modus operandi is for tackling enemies. Almost every spell or skill will come in use for a certain breed of beast, so it's up to you to strategize which upgrades benefit your playstyle. It's not the most complex fighting system in existence, but it's not the worst. It's definitely better than the MMO-style flailing you could fall into with Dragon Age. Playing as Geralt, a sarcastic yet somewhat altruistic and honorable white-haired dude, is pretty fun. The story beyond all the infinite sidequests concerns him trying to find an old protege--and a lot of missions concern themselves with finding or tracking down missing persons. SO far, it's been leading to some colorful places and characters, so I have no complaints. The writing thus far has been great, and many shades better than the "good or bad!?" choice wheel in other RPGs. As I've mentioned before, one of the reasons I love W3 so far is that there are no cut and dried good/evil options. You do as you please and deal with the consequences. After I accidentally instigated a murderous barroom brawl, I realized one of the drunk patrons was the missing brother I was supposed to find from an old sidequest. I had killed him, failing that mission. Hours and hours later, this was brought up again in a distant city, as a pub patron decried me as a murderer who had a penchant for instigating fatal fights. Other paths you take may shut out characters or events, so the world is constantly changing with your choices. You can work for free or haggle for monies when you come to collect. You can change sides midway through a contract or fulfill your original bargains. My nitpicks about W3 are mainly concerning difficulty and inventory management. As I've said before, the fights can be a bit brutal at high difficulty early on, and so many battles will require sustenance to maintain your HP. On higher levels of the game, some enemies can just becomes sponges to damage, turning into unfun slogs if you don't have the proper equipment. Additionally, taking down powerful groups of enemies will sometimes devolve the combat into a game of endless dodges and roll, sometimes giving the monsters a combination of speed and unblockable attacks that basically demands you just dodge/roll around at all times to have any hope of survival. It's a small blight on combat in general but one that lessens the fun of it. The inventory was initially a fucking mess, just like in every action RPG--full to the brim with questionable potion ingredients and trash heap junk. It's a dumb menu with even dumber, smaller text, but not a dealbreaker. It's best to ignore your alchemy stock unless you really want to sell off plants for 1gold each. Myself, I'm lucky to have divined even the basic health potion mechanics; everything else is a crapshoot. Good luck finding the right plants in the wild; you won't, and will just likely have to run back to an herbalist for everything anyway. As of this writing, though, the developers have long since patched the game with not only a variety of storage spaces in the overworld, but a greater degree of item filters and separation. Hats off to CDProjekt Red for taking the initiative to fix that. It's been 60+ hours. I have no idea if I'm closer to the endgame or not, but I'm currently at a spot where I'm required to gather people for a kind of epic showdown. Part of me assumes this is drawing to the "endgame," and yet I'm barely level 20; there are so many missions that suggest an even higher level. There are tons of hidden gear sets, ridiculous stories to uncover in the world, and mysteries to solve. To continue to offer and dangle interesting material after 60 hours in a game like this is comparable to the 50+ hours I spent with Xenoblade Chronicles on the Wii, which has to be some kind of record. That CDProjektRed has graciously put out small DLC packs for cards, side missions, and shiny new armor sets is even cooler--a company that has been supporting the game with tons of patchworks and great content since the first week in release. I'd strongly recommend Witcher 3, especially if you're coming out of Inquisition, tired and fatigued by badcombat and even shittier mission structure. The story was there, but the bullshit fetch quests abound didn't enthuse me to finish the game. Witcher 3 is definitely worth the time and effort to play, especially if you yearned for something more than BioWare has put out as of late. I've been obsessed with it since first booting it up. Is it really all we were lead to believe? First impressions and official game reviews seem to suggest yes. Witcher 3 is a viable GOTY candidate due to how incredibly massive it is with interesting content, characters, and places to go. I've thought about it often, certain experiences and decisions following me to the bitter end, always making me question if it was worth it to become altruistic in moments of strife, or to strike down others in a sound fury to prevent more suffering. You're not the chosen one, you're not a herald, and you're not a king--this is simply the collection of stories bound to a mercenary hunter. The mercy, vengeance, glory, and failure is yours to own and no one else's--you inherit the world's state without being bound by a realm of karma and definable reward. At the cusp of completeing the main storyline, I'd even go as far as to suggest W3 deserves a place in my all-time greats list, as well. It's just one of the best in its class, and a masterpiece in the action RPG genre. By definition, an RPG should strive to do more than offer numbers and inventory slots and abilities to equip--it should offer you a role. Seeing the world as Geralt and shaping the structure of his twilight adventure has been an utmost pleasure; a triumph of RPG design, writing, and technical attention. September is less than a month away, which means the Gamespocalypse is upon us. Yes, the nonstop barrage of games that doesn't even cease past December is coming, and we all need to prepare for the onslaught of preorders and potential disappointment. Next month is just the first stage of this "event" but it might be the most pertinent--at least before Fallout 4 in November. Ina lot of ways, it's an important cluster of releases: a swan song, an ultimate eventuality, a final quarterly effort, and a resurrection. These are, of course, MGSV, Super Mario Maker, Mad Max, and Destiny.
Yes, I know the last title on this list is a mindblowing thing to consider, but also consider this: Diablo 3 was in similar dire straights for a large part of its initial release. People fucking hated it alongside everything it shipped with. Now consider how awesome the Ultimate Evil edition is, and how revolutionary Reaper of Souls was for the redemption of the title. Destiny is, for the time being, looking like its Reaper of Souls moment could be coming just about a year after its initial release. The expansive revamp, titled The Taken King, comes in the middle of September and offers everything from the removal of gating content through Light (now gone) to a litany of easier, more fun objectives, tasks, and storyline material. Even that floaty robot is getting rewritten and re-voiced by everyone's favorite everyman, Nolan North. I never thought I'd see this day, but I'd strongly consider dipping my feet back into Destiny--a game that was fun yet flawed, and had eventually morphed so much that I felt the magic disappeared sometime last October. A year's exodus from a development fraught with changes and confusion has made me receptive to the new makeover, especially now that the wicked RNG system of raids and gating people from experiencing everything unless you owned a specific item set seems to be void. The main event is, of course, MGSV. What else can be said for it besides the gushing over rocket punches, goat kidnapping via airlift, and of course the HARSH REALITIES OF WAR. MGS, as a series, has always been such a strange and fascinating juxtaposition of philosophical and political ideals against the reality of being just a game, and one filled with goofy shit. There will not only be child soldiers and internal organ bombs, but horseshit traps and cardboard tanks to wear. It's the perfect cocktail of insanity in the tasty brew of espionage action, now upped considerably in the wake of the new and improved Fox Engine. Konami may be a major fuckup as of this writeup, but this is the last masterpiece they need to push out the door before they become hellbound forever. Mad Max has to be the unluckiest game on the list. Forced to follow up not only the best movie of the year so far AND releasing on the same day as Kojima Magnum Opus, the odds are already stacked against it. Add the fact that this is WB's followup after a disastrous and lackluster Batman release--with almost no real in-depth gameplay walkthroughs--and you've got a recipe for low sales numbers and MEDIOCRE reviews. I want to be optimistic for Mad Max, I really do--but more and more hands-on previews just seem to say it's depressingly average and we aren't really getting any other footage to suggest otherwise. Compare this to the hours of gameplay we've seen for MGSV and the uber chaos on display for the other Avalanche game, JC3. Super Mario Maker looks so amazing that it may in fact become the genesis of a new age in the franchise. No more will people have to download weird Kaizo hacks of Super Mario World; the essence of hard-as-nails, goofball Mario levels is now on the WiiU, and I didn't expect to want this little factory as much as I do now. Making a dramatic appearance at the new Nintendo World Championships, it's truly amazing how much we're going to be able to create with this game. Even better are things like online sharing, daily challenges, rankings, stats on level completions, and favorites--things I almost didn't think Nintendo would care to implement. It's looking like a fully-featured piece of software with enough lifeline to last eons. The Mario games of the future may not be in the hands of Nintendo anymore, but of those who take the time to master this new software. E3 BEST-OF-SHOW Technically, I'm incredibly late with this, but here we go: a bitesized group of things coming fairly soon and have tangible release windows. I would have done a detailed writeup on every conference but realized it wasn't worth anyone's fucking time to dig through so much text. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Squeenix, non-entity trailers of things without any kind of release date aside, are in fantastic shape in the non-JRPG department. The sequel to the brilliant Human Revolution broke through with some great trailer gameplay, and an extended 20-minute walkthrough of a mission. Mankind Divided looks incredible in terms of visual fidelity and the awesome range of new abilities and mechanics being brought to the table. It stands to be the ultimate Deus Ex experience. I'm already predicting it becomes one of the best games of 2016. Just Cause 3 While Squeenix also showed the intriguing new Hitman series refresh, it was the definitive preview of JC3 that really blew my mind. With every new morsel of information about this chaos simulator, it becomes more and more apparent that JC3 is pure fun incarnate, brewed and bottled by the dozen. JC2 was tremendously hilarious and exciting, and with the debut of infinite C4, the wingsuit, and even more agreeable quality-of-life improvements, JC3 is yet another Squeenix game that is going to blow the roof off due to its sense of freedom. Mirror's Edge My fears about Mirror's Edge: Catalyst were cast aside as the details about the new open world setting slowly trickled in. "No guns and no boundaries--Faith IS the weapon," was the platitude recited, and so there was much rejoicing. It's good to know EA GETS it, and several gameplay demos were reported as very positive. The world's most interesting first-person game is bound to be a very welcome start to the year come 2016. Later on, Gamescom footage would all but confirm that the series was headed in the right direction. MGS5 What more can be said about Kojim'a magnum opus? It's shaping up to be the ultimate stealth action game, with a wondrous variety of tools, options, strategies and side-ops. Unlike the other open world games set to come out, The Phantom Pain, is a strange and surreal mix of the weird and the serious espionage. It's essentially the Just Cause for the more subtle action protagonist--if utilizing things like mini-robot walkers and horseshit traps is subtle. It took a long way to go from MGS2's cold corridors to MGS3's jungle warfare to the wide-encompassing ultimatum of MGSV--but the wait is going to be worth it. It combines the best aspects of Metal Gear in an engaging, do-as-you-like package. Expect nothing less than a masterpiece. Super Mario Maker See above. Fallout 4 It was Bethesda's first foray into a centralized conference of E3, and the first of the entire show to boot. With so much riding on Fallout's appearance, I was happy to see Bethesda offer an exciting look at how they've improved the game's 4th (5th?) entry. The customization for weapons, home bases, and character appearance represents a huge overhaul of the Gamebryo garbage dump standard, and even the overall graphics seem more approachable than the dumpster level of F3 and its ilk. Bethesda seems confident in the amount of shit they're pouring into this one, and even if it follows old-hat Fallout quirks, they'll be even more fun things to make and break apart. I'm still a little cautious about Fallout 4, but I'm definitely more stoked about the prospect of it than before. HONORABLE MENTION: HITMAN As mentioned previously, although Hitman was technically shown off with tangible gameplay, the guarantee that this series refresh offers zero microtransactions and a slew of free DLC updates is a gutsy, admirable move by Squeenix to take. It would be so easy to cough up bitesize bullshit into the franchise. The good people at IO went on record to say the game would be the largest Hitman ever on console, and things like season passes are "ripoffs" to customers that would not be injected into presales. Hitman could essentially be part of the best dual Christmas presents ever when it releases in December with Just Cause 3. *** === Special News Bulletin: Heir to the Throne === Everyone and their mom continues to mourn the loss of P.T., the Legendary Game That Will Never Be, along with the overall disintegration of the studio that brought us Castlevania, Contra, Silent Hill, and Metal Gear. While P.T. will eventually fade away someday as the last remaining PS4 harddrive croaks in a decade or so, a small studio named Lillith Ltd. has been secret toiling away at the spiritual successor to The Chosen One. Entitled "Allison Road," a 13-minute alpha demo has already given me nightmares--a good sign, I suppose, since P.T. was the first horror-related thing in any medium that has unnerved me in a long time. Although it's still about a year off from completion, the work that has been put into Allison Road so far is very encouraging. There's been talk of it migrating from a PC release to consoles soon, which makes sense given how broken people were about the PS4 losing its fascinating little demo. Honestly, Sony is batshit insane if they don't follow up with their "all your dreams will come true" approach from E3 and lock this new project into their release schedule. **** That's all for August; enjoy all the indie games PS4 pumps out and prepare for the glory to come in September. Another year means yet another E3 conference to livetweet and make fun of. If you recall 2014, you'd remember it was painfully uneventful; rare were the moments of embarrassing shit, as were the legit "wow" factors. I think we already have one casualty--the now-cancelled Phantom Dust--from the small list of surprises initially revealed last year. Let me just say that nobody really "wins" a trade show; there are only losers who refuse to show anything except sports games (looking at you, EA.) However, in 2014 Nintendo proceeded to make everyone else look like shit by turning the tables on the "show 5 minutes of CGI cutscenes" standard and offered live on-the-floor demos of dozens of games,walking through their gameplay for an entire week. The Treehouse pretty much set a new bar for E3 activities by actually fucking bothering to show you how the actual games work and look. Such a discovery is usually done by scientists in labs, but here it was accomplished merely by a tall man in a suit and a cult of Japanese salespeople.
E3 2015 is also special because it's coming fresh off the hump of a year of Lost Hype. Big dumb blundering elephants like Unity, Destiny, and even the fetchquest hell of "GOTY" Dragon Age Inquisition are still etched into the monoliths, hopefully serving as a precaution. This year seems incredibly lush with diverse offerings for 2015 and beyond. My expectations--foolish as they may be--are possibly the highest they've ever been for an E3 in years. Enough time has passed since companies like EA, Square Enix, and Bethesda have had something to share, making this June a perfect time for their resurgance to prominence. We may possibly get to see the next generation of Deus Ex, Mass Effect, Mirror's Edge, and Fallout--and knowing there's a great chance of this occurring is wonderful. Here's my own take on what we can likely look forward to: BETHESDA Part-time dollmaker and RPG developer Bethesda is a significant addition to E3, as it is their first full-scale stage presentation ever. Naturally, they must have something huge to share, and that something is going to be Fallout 4. Thankfully confirmed to be past the last-gen woes of programming shit like Skyrim on PS3, I'm cautiously optimistic about how Bethesda is going to handle the franchise without Obsidian's benevolent hand or any tremendous improvements in their animations. The recent Fallout trailer revealed some grand new lighting tech and a general step up from the muddy garbage of last gen tech, but I'm still not completely convinced that this looks as good as it should be. Bethesda's other ace in the sleeve is the debut of the new Doom, which may be simply known as "Doom." Following an incredibly positive reception and a standing ovation at a closed-doors reveal at QuakeCon, color me intrigued by what the Grandfather of FPS games can dish up. It sounds like the next Doom is going to be classic--fast, frenetic, and bloody as shit. As much as I love Fallout and all its gimmicky, glichy nonsense, I'd still love to see Dishonored 2 make a surprise appearance--the first game was one of my all-time favorites in recent years. Likelihood of a Fallout 4 trailer wherein we are treated to an oldtimey 50's record playing over disturbing imagery is approximately 95% (or 50%, depending on your VATS rating.) EA Formerly the "worst game company in existence" (not even fucking close, in my opinion), EA had the most inconsequential E3 press statement ever in 2014. I barely remember if they bothered to show Mirror's Edge 2 amidst an ocean of generic sports titles, as they put out a slight tease in 2013. I'm betting the farm on this being the year they set the sports shit aside and finally give us a bigger glimpse of the Best First Person Simulator Of All Time, Part Deux, as well as an early 2016 release date. Also in the box is Mass Effect Whatever, set for Whenever; nobody really knows whats going on with the next spaceman epic but I really miss that series, and have missed it even more while playing Dragon Age and picking up my hundreth fucking shard piece. My vote for "big shocker" would be either a tiny glimpse at Mass Effect, or some kind of Dead Space revival (which won't happen, ever, because EA sucks.) Really, when I watch EA this year, it will be for--as it has been for the past 2 fucking years--a preview of Mirror's Edge. UBISOFT Ubisoft gave us two pieces of shit last year in the forms of AC Unity and Watchdogs. The latter came away without too much major scathing; the former wasn't so lucky. Unity has been maligned so much that it's useless to go in-depth about it again, so I'll just say that Ubisoft has a ways to go before regaining peoples interests. They wasted no time in making another goddamn AC game, though--this time, in Victorian England. A recent alpha demo of the newly crowned AC Syndicate revealed that this year's AC game was just as boring and worthless as the others, giving me virtually zero hope in Ubisoft's presentation for 2015. Things seem even more dire now that The Division has been bumped back yet another year, so we won't even see that until 2016. You can count on Aisha Tyler making tons of horrible jokes while we watch more trailers about the same goddamn Ubisoft games over and over, but if we're lucky then Michel Ancel will come out and reveal Beyond Good and Evil 2. If there is a god and he/she loves us, Ancel will go even further and give us another look at his beautiful pet project for the PS4, which was titled "Wild" at last year's E3. I'm going to take a pager out on Ubisoft being the lamest part of E3; beating out EA purely because we're almost guaranteed the presence of Mirror's Edge. SQUARE-ENIX Squeenix is an odd beast. On one hand, I've never given a shit about their crossover fanfiction fiesta KingdomHearts, or their consistently terrible Final Fantasy iterations. On the other hand, the Enix/Eidos side of things has been in charge of games like Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, Just Cause, and Hitman--an eclectic collection of genres and favored IPs. Although I'm sure FF15 and KH3 will be shown off, it's Deus Ex: Mankind Divided that has me the most excited. Human Revolution was a great game made better only by the Director's Cut edition, and with the studio developers taking what they've learned into a current-gen production, it's safe to say the next installment of Deus Ex is going to be even more amazing. Opposite from the first person multigenre Deus Ex is Just Cause 3, a game that has been described by Avalanche Studios as centering around fun and chaos over storylines and boring exposition. Given the passionate take they've put forth with this third game, I'm extremely enthused about how much more they could cram in besides what we glimpsed in the explosive Just Cause 2. In a year dominated by so many open-world games, JC3 may be the most chaotic and frenetic when compared to even Arkham Knight, Witcher 3, Assassin's Creed, and possibly Mad Max. Squaresoft by itself might have been centered on solely action RPG offerings, but the other side of the equation at Square-Enix is definitely going to be showing off some really fun games for 2015 and beyond. NINTENDO The prodigal son for all these years, somehow the "doomed company" rises up once more for a non-traditional Direct followed by not only the Treehouse gameplay sessions, but a revived Nintendo World Championships--the first since the 1980s. I assume this is the counterpart to 2014's Smash Bros tourney, and I applaud Nintendo on making E3 such a big event for themselves without the use of a bunch of dorks onstage. That being said, what's in the bag for Nintendo with Zelda being upended to 2016? Smart money is on Mario Maker, Star Fox, Yoshi’s Wooly World, and a nationwide release date for the long-awaited Xenoblade Chronicles X. Survey suggests we're also long overdue for some surprises, particularly from notably-silent second party titans Next Level Games and Retro Studios. With just 3 or 4 confirmed titles coming this year after Splatoon, Nintendo is going to need some powerful releases this holiday season, and that's a tall order; consider the fact that last year, we received Smash Bros, Mario Kart, and Bayonetta--a ridiculous collection of top-tier properties. There's little chance to match that kind of quality, but who knows? Nintendo quality is so pure and mythical that it may take only 1 or 2 new announcements to reel in the kudos. It's a cliche at this point, but as usual I'm hoping for a new Metroid to be unveiled. What I do think is a safer bet, however, is a renewed interest in supporting titles like Kart and Smash Bros with a slew of DLC; as per IWata's recent comments this spring, it appears that several existing titles will be supported for the long haul. And why not? The DLC for both has been promising and fairly priced thus far. Things can only go up from here. MICROSOFT After suffering a humiliating bitchslap / mic drop from Jack Tretton in E3 2013, Microsoft rebounded to present a solid assortment of stupid little wingdings and doodads for 2014. It wasn't anything too special, beyond fucking with everyone's hearts with a Conker tease and showing off a surprisingly fun Fable Legends. Well, it's 2015, and nobody gives a fuck about Project Spark, the now-F2P shitpile that Fable Legends is to become, or Sunset Tryharddrive. MS has been hanging on, and even weathered a false PT rumor that they had picked up the IP--no such luck. What does MS have to offer, then? Barring their usual social media bullshit and platform connectivity buzzword salads, there's Halo I guess. And Killer Instinct, which has been chugging along quite nicely. We've been lead to believe that Battletoads...fucking Battletoads is getting a revival, as well. You can count on their new Tomb Raider project to be shown off as the answer to the now-delayed Uncharted, and we'll probably see something about Windows 10, too. Probably the only exclusive I openly pine for is Scalebound, the new quasi-Devil May Cry dragonslayer game coming from His Holy Majesty, Hideki Kamiya. If there's one thing I have to applaud Microsoft for, it's landing the services of the man responsible for Bayonetta, Wonderful 101, Devil May Cry, Okami, and a good chunk of Resident Evil 2. He's a fucking masterclass developer and designer, so enjoy the fun that's coming to you, XBone owners. I've honestly never been invested in MS exclusives, since they're few and far between--but MS still has a finger on the pulse of what people like. Buying Minecraft for a jillion dollars proved that they know what games are lucrative and how to make a splash, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt this year and say that they have a more exciting presentation than their past 2 years. Watch out for Cliffy B and some kind of Gears of War announcement, because what's the point of your Xbox if you can't play Gears of War!? SONY Sony, a company best known for getting exclusive DLC for every fucking game, reigns supreme in the land of consoles. Despite not having a plethora of exclusives and suffering drawback from the steaming garbage that was The Order 1886, Sony still had an ace in the sleeve with Bloodborne and a big indie hit with Helldivers. These supported it in the spring, but the wail of summer approaches and we need validation for why we should still buy consoles. Uncharted 4 is shelved until 2016 Q1, so Sony will probably turn to a Journey re-release and more info on No Man's Sky--a title they claim to be supporting as if it were its own. I'm really not sure what exclusives will be on Sony's plate this year, but I'm guessing it would be a really good time to tip their hand and mention Last Guardian, if it still exists. Look out for preliminary gameplay featurettes for their new golden child Street Fighter 5, as well as more ridiculous footage from the Spring 2016 release/Pixar movie, Ratchet and Clank. As a person who has owned PS2, PS3, and now PS4, I have a good amount of confidence in Sony to keep rolling on successfully--although my current foray into PC gaming has me wondering just how necessary consoles will be for me in the future. The ball is in Sony's court to convince us whether or not we should look beyond the PC/Nintendo setups, provided that MS doesn't get to the answers first. ________________________________________________________________ One of my more intruiging questions regards two games coming out on the same day in September: The Phantom Pain, and Mad Max. Both of these games interest me greatly for a number of reasons; MGS5 represents the be-all, end-all finale of the series as we know it. It is the last hurrah for Hideo Kojima's fruitful work with Konami, and possibly the last time he'll ever get to work with the IP. Following the bitter and tumultuous storyline of Konami's downfall this year, it will be interesting to see if Konami or Kojima show up to promote MGS5. I'm looking forward to the audience reaction to either possibility. On the other side of the spectrum is Mad Max, a Warner Bros game that hasn't received a great deal of press besides an excellent cover feature in Game Informer. Mad Max is the opposite of MGS5 in so many ways: it's loud, it's brash, and it's the start of something new. Arkham Knight is the last Batman game, a series that pioneered a certain type of free-flowing combat. It looks like Warner Bros is looking to continue that kind of engine on not only Shadow Of Mordor, but potentially with the starkly different wasteland of Mad Max. Given how well the newest film has been received, I'd wager that Mad Max could be another stepping stone WB takes in their open world beatemup games, opening up the path for a new series to follow up Batman. Mad Max looks to be unique in its desert landscape and vehicular combat, and I hope the fact that it releases in the same timeframe as Kojima's magnum opus doesn't doom it as dead on arrival. That's all for my predictions as of today. I will say that I have games like Battletoads, Dishonored 2, Agent, Metroid, and Advance Wars on my wishlist, along with The Last Guardian--I still believe! I'm also pretty stoked for whatever Platinum has in store for us; they've been teasing something new, and Platinum always delivers the goods. In any case, I have reason to think it'll be a very solid week of game reveals and previews. 2015 is only half done and we still have quite a bit of content on the rise. The future is looking bright for the current generation. I'LL SEE YOU IN THE VR MOSH PIT, CHIPPIES. We're only just entering April, but with the arrival of Bloodborne and the impending release of Mortal Kombat X, it feels like the game year has just started. Chalk it up to some truly lackluster showings from Evolve, The Order 1886, and Codename STEAM, maybe; 2015 has a lot of legroom to stretch out and wash the taste of 2014 away. Last year, we were plagued by a backwash of bullshit--games like AC Unity, Watchdogs, and Destiny completely disappointed me. The big white whale of this spring was always going to be one singular name: Bloodborne, heir to the throne of the harder-than-hell-on-horseback Dark Souls series. However, on the road to the Mega Summer of Splatoon, Arkham Knight, and Witcher 3, we've still been gifted with some other great titles. 1) Darkest Dungeon: I've never bothered to buy a game on Steam in Early Access til Darkest Dungeon, which has more than enough polished content as of April to count as well worth the $15 or so for admission as the game is continuously updated (it will be in its final state around June.) A dungeon crawler RPG, Darkest Dungeon mixes roguelike mechanics of permadeath with the added permanence of town and character recruitment functions, ensuring you'll always have a fresh slew of characters to use even when your entire roster dies. It's a good thing too, because the name of the game is madness--one of the selling points of Darkest Dungeon. As your characters receive stress from crits, poor lighting, or horrid visuals, they'll begin to crack and receive a number of negative traits. A Fearful hunter may refuse his turn, while a Masochistic healer may instead hurt herself. On the flipside, the stress may lead an antisocial Leper to become Virtuous, taking charge and striking down enemies in single cleaves of his greatsword. Besides the Stress mechanic and the fun cast of character classes, the overall missions of exploring each dungeon will throw some truly grotesque monstrosities at you. Crippled mutant pigs that vomit on you and zombified Aztec warriors are just some of the horrids that you'll fight, along with some truly fantastic boss battles. You'll need to constantly navigate the map's rooms while contending with traps, a dimming light level only alleviated through burning torches, and your own sanity. Periodically, you'll be in town quelling stress through use of brothels, sanitariums, and cloisters. Characters gain Quirks, both positive and negative, throughout their explorations--and this sometimes has an effect not only in battle, but on the places you may or may not be able to visit for stress relief. Darkest Dungeon is one of the most fun RPGs I've played in years, and the constant morphing of battles, locations, and character states makes for a very engaging dungeon crawler. The overall presentation is top notch with a truly excellent narration that stays with you all the time, weaving a story with every action that you take in and out of battle. More characters, monsters, and balancing are still to come, and I cannot wait to see how the developers improve upon what is cautiuously becoming the first great game of 2015. 2) Helldivers: What if Destiny was a topdown shooter with better multiplayer, more chaos, and giant ED-209 mechs? Helldivers was the PS4's first great exclusive this year, taking the tired genre of topdown shooting and breathing new life, strategy, and fun into it. Defending SUper Earth from armies of Starship Trooper buglings, cyborgs, and Protoss-esque psionic beings, you'll be hopping from planet to planet utilizing around 20 or so unique guns and accomplishing various tiny mission objectives. Oddly enough, there's a degree of stealth to be found here; you want to either take out patrols that alarm the huge reinforcements, or sneak past them while on the way to your objectives. The big caveat here is in the Stratagems, though: 4 abilities you select before a mission, which can be called in via drop pods once you frantically enter a control pad combination. Nothing's crazier than rushing to input a Stratagem command in the midst of a huge firefight, especially since there's always friendly fire. One of the constants in engaging the enemy will be trying your best not to shoot your teammates instead, or even get killed via your own turret's line of fire. The Stratagems themselves are varied enough, ranging from simple UAV drones and turrets, to mechs, APCs, one-use heavy weapons, and mines. You can also call down a variety of airstrikes, rail gun assaults, bombing runs, and nukes--all of which can kill you as well. Much of the toolset will be earned through progressing in the planets, though quite a few will also be unlocked once you level up your character. Multiplayer is incredible and hilarious, as even the drop pod for your reinforcement can squash and kill others. It is pure entropy, and it's all part of a larger metagame set up by the developers: a global tracker that pushes out events for the community to eventually puch back invasions and gain control of sectors. Though it's still early for how this will pan out, Helldivers definitely still has enough content to just muck around in with others. It's indubitably one of the best co-op experiences right now, and long-term support could help it really become something masterful by year's end. 3) Bloodborne: I can't help but imagine that if Castlevania had followed the logical step towards survival-action horror instead of God Of War clone #384, it would have evolved into Bloodborne. As someone who has never played a Souls game in his life, I actually became quite comfortable with the gameplay mechanics at work in Bloodborne; it's all about positioning, caution, and timing. It's also about exploring and surviving a nightmarish world where you feel less the hunter and more the hunted, something I have a hard time shaking off as I slowly make progress inch by inch. The story being told is as much quagmired in mystery as the road to dawn seems to be; you're left to your own devices to unlock essential shortcuts, elevators, and key items. Retsore lanterns are conservatively placed and there's no easy way to accumulate these treasured shortcuts. Instead, you'll wallow through fetid ranks, trying your best to engage large monsters or entire ambush parties of challenging foes. Even as much as 2 enemies at once can push your stress, depending on how lethal they are. However, Bloodborne gives you the tools to fight back; you can Regain some health lost by immediately striking back, or you can riposte the blow with a stunning shot from your sidearm. Bloodborne is about mastery over how enemies behave, even if it takes your death to gain enlightenment. Truth be told, in the first areas of the game, I died about thrice while exploring and unlocking the first major shortcut--my deaths outside a boss battle were not so common unless I carelessly pursued enemies. There are occasional moments of frustration--mainly with load times right now--but I've been pissed off more at other games for now. Granted, I'm still not very far into the game, only conquering the Cleric Beast this far (and beating it on the first try that I randomly found him) but I am enjoying the rush and genuinely think it's probably going to be one of the premier PS4 exclusives for the lifespan of the console. Bloodborne is fast-paced, aggressive, and it rewards said aggression. There's little place for complacency or shields, which I greatly appreciate; having tried Dark Souls once, I disliked the slower function of parrying with the board. Although not for the faint of heart or the wilting action game player, Bloodborne is shaping up to be an excellent journey into toiling darkness and remarkable triumphs. __________________________________ Other games I'd recommend would be Dying Light and Kirby and the Rainbow Curse; one being the zenith of zombie games and parkour-based first person traversal, and the other being a spiritual sequel to a wonderful DS game with unique stylus gameplay. Check them out if you can. Games I would not recommend include Evolve and The Order 1886, for reasons I'm sure people can divine by now. I've not tried the latter, but have owned the former at full price and greatly regretted buying such a repetitive and surprisingly boorish game.) April will play host to MKX, which I'm looking forward to reviewing in full this week. It's about to get extremely bloody in here--but bloodier still are my initial 2015 predictions for Top Ten Games Of The Year. Keep in mind that I wrote this down at 2015's start: 1) Bloodborne 2) Mortal Kombat X 3) Zelda 4) Xenoblade Chronicles X 5) No Man's Sky 6) Codename STEAM 7) Splatoon 8) Batman: Arkham Knight 9) The Witcher 3 10 MGS 5: the Phantom Pain Thus far, we can take Zelda WiiU off the list due to its unfortunate delay to 2016. Gone too, is Codename STEAM due to trying the gameplay and not being impressed at all. Note that I was clairvoyant enough not to put down Uncharted 4, which was officially put down as a Spring 2016 release. What's next to be knocked off my preliminary list? I'm guessing--with bated breath--that No Man's Sky gets some kind of delay. And finally, just for laughs, here was my Best Of 2014 in no particular order: 1) Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze 2) Rusty's Real Deal Baseball 3) Middle-Earth: Shadow Of Morder 4) Bayonetta 2 5) Mario Kart 8 6) Dragon Age: Inquisition 7) Shovel Knight 8) Far Cry 4 9) Super Smash Bros WiiU 10) P.T. Honorable Mention: D3: Ultimate Evil Edition Maybe some of you remember a place called Funco Land if you were growing up in the late 90's; it was a used-game emporium that had the less-than-admirable knack for selling you cheap, steaming slag at tomorrow's prices. Parents everywhere were tricked on a consistent basis, thinking, “Oh, only $12? Must be a great deal.” No; no it was not, and it never was. When's the last time somebody parted with Zelda or Star Fox for that price? No good can come from peddling used, marked-up garbage, because more often than not, a poor kid like myself would fall into the death trap of whatever cruddy game I received from this chamber of horrors. One such example was Spider-Man and the X-Men: Arcade's Revenge. Let me rephrase the previous paragraph: This game was the fucking bane of my childhood. For starters, I was goddamn crazy about Spider-Man, X-Men, and generally anything to do with Marvel Comics. When I saw the cover of the cartridge, I freaked out because of all the colorful characters displayed. I thought, “Spidey and the X-Men? Gee, what an all-star team! What could go wrong?” Evidently EVERYTHING could, and would, go wrong with this frustrating goddamned game. The source of all these woes doesn't just lie with its origin of sale, but its origin of development: LJN, an infamous shitfactory when it came to licensed games on the systems of the 90's. I'm not even going to bother elaborating on their multitude of failures, because we'd be here all day. Instead, I'm just going to dive headfirst into this game's eccentricities, thereby cracking my skull open and releasing a plethora of awful memories. One of the worst things about Arcade's Revenge was the outright lie from the get-go: you couldn't play as the fucking X-Men until you solved a boring Hide-And-Seek segment with Spider-Man and sequential traffic lights. Yes, fucking traffic lights. I don't know what else to call them...alarms, maybe? Either way, you had to collect them all in this dingy, boring building which somehow hides a neo-noir laboratory filled with even more traffic lights. The worst part about it was that you couldn't even collect them all right away; you had to collect one, then backtrack to whichever stupid little alarm was ringing next. If a light wasn't lit up, it didn't do shit. Yes, Spider-Man essentially becomes a meter maid in this first segment of the game. And you have to complete this “intro” level every goddamn time you turn on this wretched abomination. Aside from the overall lack of any bad-guy busting, you'd also note that Spider-Man seems to be covered in sticky fucking glue, because he wants to wallcrawl on EVERYTHING. This creates some very, very frustrating, nonsensical battles with the game on where you want to land or stay, because just touching a flat surface will staple your ass to it. If you somehow didn't break the SNES in half before this segment was over, you'd be rewarded with an actual character selection screen. You can be a masochist and select Spider-Man again, or select 3 of 4 playable X-men. I say 3 because Storm's level takes place underwater, which makes total sense for a superhero who is known for flying. Needless to say, don't pick Storm. I know that technically you have to beat every scenario to win the game, but don't worry. You won't be beating this game. *** The difficulty in this game is legendary. Not quite the level of gutbusting you'd have to deal with in Dark Souls or even Battletoads, but it's there. Very little is explained to you; you just kind of figure things out after 2 or 3 excruciating playthroughs. There are about 5 different base scenarios, not counting the initial Banjo-Kazooie collect-a-thon, and you'll need to play as every goddamn character in order to reach Arcade (some b-list supervillain who was shoehorned into being the big bad, due to his “videogame” power/theme/fetish). Most of you will probably steer clear of Spider-Man like he's a blind date with bad halitosis and even worse swinging mechanics, and you'd be right. You'd also be right if you threw this game in the garbage. But, if you still want to slog through it, you'll be relieved to know there are no collectables; just the aforementioned bad swinging mechanics. Spidey's swinging is pretty basic; you send out a webline and it can carry you over in an arc however high or low you want. However, the slightest touch from anything in this incredibly quick trajectory will be met with the ever-annoying “OOMPHPH” damage voiceclip and Spidey being dropped like hot garbage, likely into a bottomless abyss. You'll be glad to know that Spidey's scenarios depend mainly on this ever-so-reliable websling. Spidey's first act takes place in some kind of fucked up construction site. There isn't much work being done because there are lots of weird robots dropping mines all over the place. The robots have also done a particularly shit job doing the electrical work, as you'll realize when you fall into a briar patch of livewires again and again. You'll swing around and get killed often, trying in vain to cling to some weird vomit-tinged foam lining. For some reason, Spider-Man cannot adhere to this vomit foam, making a few swing n' clings quite taxing. Equally confusing is why this construction site is littered with gems and diamonds. Perhaps they were purloined by the stage boss: the fucking Devil. That's right, Spider-Man's boss battle of Act One is against Satan himself in his winged heirophant form. Things don't fare better in Act Two, where the game turns into a particularly awful platforming course. Besides your websling struggles, you'll also be contending with some bullshit Mega Man X2 weather patterns, fighting against the weight and slowdown of rain particles that occasionally damper your momentum. If you somehow make it to the end, you'll be rewarded with Boss Battle for Idiots: Maximum Carnage, starring ADHD Carnage and Horizontal Hatemachine Rhino. *** I'm sure everyone and their moms didn't want to be Spider-Man again the first time they completed his terrible introduction level, so they did what everyone in the 90s was prone to do: pick Wolverine, quintessential Canuck badass. How do you counter such awesomeness, such brute strength and animal rage? You put this angry little man in an infuriating circus stage filled with jack-in-the-box machine gunners and barely-reachable platforms. Architecturally, things aren't anywhere near the what-the-fuck factor of Spider-Man's platformer perils, but it's not fun, either. It's a long, boring climb past various annoying explosives that you can just regenerate from, anyway. Retracting Wolvie's claws allows you to slowly but surely regain some of your health, so what's the point? (Un)fortunately, the game developers made sure to challenge this mechanic in the second act, which comes after your anticlimactic fight with an anorexic Apocalypse who suffers from the same debilitating syndrome as Cletus “Jump Around Listlessly” Kasady. Act Two for Wolverine is one of the worst levels in any game, forever. You're being endlessly chased by the Juggernaut, who can only be stopped by slashing down every fucking 8-ton anvil suspended by ropes (why?) and running to the right. Since the Juggernaut is no slouch, you'll need to repeatedly halt your mad dash and cut down every weight you can to slow his steady march, all while clawing through walls and jumping over obstacles. This level sucks because if you miss a few weights, you won't kill Juggernaut in time before the bottomless pit that awaits you at the end. So, even if you outrun that bastard, you'll still die. The kicker of this race against time is that Juggernaut actually jumps into the fucking pit when he reaches it, too. Poor dumb fucker just can't wait to end it all. The first time I ever played this game and made it to the end, I was furious that it was just a red herring. Shit like this was just more evidence on the ever-mounting pile that LJN 1) hated us, and 2) hated us enough to promise freedom, only to let the ocean collapse in on us at the last second. LJN is demon Moses, and this game is the plague of locusts. *** If being chased by rampaging roid-ragers isn't your thing, then being chased by a gigantic spiked ball while dodging attacks from possessed chess pieces might be more up your alley. Gambit's scenario consists of one constant truth: scrolling. The first level is a horizontal run across some sort of odd MC Escher LEGO set, throwing tons of bizarre shit at you so fast that you won't even be able to process it at first playthrough. All the while, a gargantuan bowling ball is rolling towards you from the left, its rumbling cacophony being the catalyst for sweaty palms and frequent swearing as you frantically try to break apart another Kraft macaroni-colored barrier. It's a freaking warzone. Gambit is unique in that he relies upon a finite salvo of ammunition: his playing cards. If there's one thing LJN can be commended for, it's for being true to MOST of the heroic powers that be. Spidey swings, Wolverine can retract claws to heal, Cyclops can't ride roller coasters, and Gambit doesn't have a magic satchel of cards. To deal with this shortcoming, you can periodically collect “refunds” from used cards, picking up leftovers from attacks on enemies or breakable walls. If you run out of cards, you're fucked. Gambit's level was the one I found myself playing the most, due to its incredibly insane premise and absolutely rockin' musical theme. I don't even remember beating the first Act as a kid, but that didn't stop me from trying over and over and over. Unlike the inane bullshit of the other scenarios, Gambit's just feels special, spectacular, and nerve-wracking. With Wolverine's stage, you felt like you'd been cheated if you missed one fucking anvil dropped on Juggernaut's noggin. With Gambit, it was all about being the master of your domain; it's just you and the game, dodging a veritable bullethell of projectiles while you made snap judgments on how best to use your ammunition. You need to strike a keen balance between taking out threats or keeping up the pace. You take too long eliminating chess pawns and weird globular drones, the ball will squash you. You ignore the enemies, and you get melted. The boss of this stage is a giant fucking playing card with Clark Gable's face on it. Act Two is a six-minute brigade of shit while you're on a platform that is vertically rising. Although this is significantly easier than the previous challenge of a god-sized wrecking ball racing you while Kasparov's chess set from hell wants you dead, there's still the offchance that you will fall asleep and get smushed by a random ceiling. Finally, you'll face off against a giant robot mannequin Black Queen from Battletoads; while you might be freaked out by the uncanny valley aspect of this, the battle itself isn't the most difficult thing in the world. By far, the real challenge was arriving at this juncture at all. *** While Gambit's stage is a grueling yet intriguing adrenaline rush of pain, Cyclops' is a bog filled with explosions, molasses, and stupid minecart rides. For some reason, Cyclops is the only character with multiple attacks; he can punch or kick (which do the same fucking thing, as far as I know) or he can use his LASER BEAM. You might be thinking, “why would anyone punch or kick when you can shoot lasers out of your eyes?” Well, here's the thing: Cyclops' aim sucks, and you are up against a thousand Master Chief clones who can aim mortars with the expertise of a Vietnam vet. You'll be “exploring” a stupid crystal cavern filled with asshole spacemen who want you dead, all the while avoiding an electrified rollercoaster track that lines the ground floor. You'll have to catch rides on passing minecarts to traverse a few of the level's areas, and if your timing is off by even a bit, it's an automatic death by electrocution. To make matters worse, tiny asshole drone spheres will fly in and try to kill you while darting in and out of your line of fire. Killing these things is a major pain in the ass, especially because they're so quick and relentless. They will literally never leave you alone until you kill them, at which point there's the added bonus of their self-destruction, which can knock you on your ass for a good chunk of health. It's easy to see why I hate this fucking level. Cyclops' second Act consists of a fun new enemy: yellow MENSA trolls who are resistant to your eyebeams, forcing you to use your pathetic fucking kick against them. Other than that, you'll still be traversing the same goddamned boring caverns, jumping across the same crystalline spires, and riding the same stupid minecarts. Cyclops' level reflects upon his boring personality so much that we are given an additional Act to make up for his wooden personality. That's right: an additional Act! And guess what? It's a boring bullethell battle against a big stupid Sentinel. Maybe it's Master Mold? If it is, I'm past the point of caring about fanservice. It's just another big dumb robot in a game full of big dumb robots. *** Storm's scenario will be the shortest description I have prepared because it sucks so, so much. What do you do with a superhero who primarily flies around and uses weather to assault her enemies? You sure as fuck don't put her underwater for a series of bullshit mazes and barely-visible battles, that's for sure—but that didn't stop Arcade's Revenge from going down this path. Storm's scenarios are so fucking baffling, so utterly terrible that it makes the Juggernaut stage look like a cakewalk. You are constantly left in confusion as to where you are supposed to be going, what anything is, and WHY THE FUCK STORM IS UNDERWATER. Storm does not have the ability to breathe underwater, and thus you are being constantly limited in how long you spend swimming. To make matters worse, your life gauge is directly connected to your oxygen; so, if you take a few hits from a nigh-invisible squid hiding from behind some fucking seaweed or metal garbage or whatever the fuck this thing is, you're that much closer to suffocating. I've wracked my brain to come up with a reason why the developers though this concept was a good idea, and the only plausible one is a real fucking stretch by any means. If you're familiar with the comics, you'd know one of Storm's greatest fears is claustrophobia. Perhaps that's the challenge that LJN was posing for us? Drawing us into Storm's personal, secret fears, allowing us to feel the same type of dread as she? Was this a complex, cerebral decision meant to blur the line between player and character? No, probably not, this stage just fucking sucks. I know there are two Acts to this Storm scenario, but I can't even honestly tell you the differences between them. Both of them take place is a blurry miasma of indistinguishable cerulean shit. Valves and drain pipes litter the background; everything looks the same and there is no concept of passage or progression, leaving you scratching your head while Storm drowns. This is just unspeakably bad and unfun. You could have been an unstoppable force of nature, hailing down ice footballs and smiting dudes with lightning bolts. Instead, they took the TMNT NES game's crappy water level and mish-mashed it with The Lost Woods or something, creating one of the worst water levels of all time, and certainly the worst amalgam of potential powers v. level design. *** If you somehow undermined your brain's death rattle as you approach the game's climax, you'll find yourself faced with a series of stupid mini-levels on the way to Arcade. Each character has a quick, boring area to get through—even Storm, who somehow gets out of the fucking water prison and gets totally new controls. It's not anything exciting, though; you still don't get to fucking fly and all you can do is fire off a generic projectile. At world's end is Arcade, riding a big stupid robot head. The unique part of this boss battle is that you start with Spider-Man, but your 4 compatriots stand off to the side and occasionally help by throwing lasers or cards or whatever. After you defeat Arcade's big robot face and beat up his clones that pop out, you'll be rewarded with a nice big fat stupid ending wherein there is no closure for any of the X-Men. Spider-Man and the X-Men: Arcade's Revenge isn't the worst game in the world, despite my stolid confusion and frustration with many gameplay decisions and cruddy levels. Graphically and sonically, it's a pretty cool experience; the art direction isn't too bad, especially when you gaze upon some of the weirder backgrounds—but it's the music that really comes out on top. Tim and Geoff Follin, superb game composers who also did work on Rock N' Roll Racing's soundtrack, created some truly awesome tracks that I still love dearly. The opening theme and Gambit's level in particular are excellent—and that level select tune is just catchy as hell. In the long run, I suppose Arcade's Revenge is something worth remembering, even begrudgingly so. In a swarm of ridiculous SNES games (and there is a veritable ocean of underdog games for the system), this one stands out just because of how often it will fuck you over and defy your expectations. It's worth playing if only to experience Gambit's stages and to cry in agony over Wolverine's segment with the Juggernaut. If there were less bullshit elements and a save feature to absolve us from doing the tutorial AND previous stages repeatedly, the game could have been classic. Instead, it's a classic example of how to piss people off with a cool comic book license. |
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