[mauve]

Let's see... What games did I play this year?

Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed: As earlier mentioned, a surprisingly fun little racing game which I'm enjoying immensely. It's not really built for people who don't have controllers, and it makes zero attempts to explain keyboard controls for those of us who don't, but it's not unplayable. Some connection issues when playing with friends, but still enjoyable.

Batman: Arkham Origins: Anyone who knows me as a gamer knows I adore the Arkham series of games. Origins is... a bit of a mixed bag, really. Its PC port is quite buggy-- not unplayably so, but still very noticible and occasionally to a point where it can affect your game. I'm not in the video game industry, and I don't know all the circumstances leading up to the game's release so I really can't judge, but considering that SO MANY of the game's textures and maps were directly imported from Arkham City, I'd expect the company to have had more time to do some debugging and playtesting. I've had to do a few missions multiple times for weird glitchy reasons, like crucial enemies respawning after I take them out, ruining my mission progression mid-mission, or the actions mapped by default to the right mouse button fail to work. I'm just sayin', if you're gonna have a boss fight that's almost EXCLUSIVELY comprised of counter attacks and/or gadget use, you'd better make damn sure that gadgets and counter-attack mechanisms ACTUALLY WORK 100% OF THE TIME. Aside from these issues, though,I'm still enjoying the game. Combat and stealth missions are still really fun, the characters are likeable (although Batman's motivations and actions sometimes seem a little "off." Still, I guess you can hand-wave it away by saying Origins takes place early in Batman's career), and it still feels like an Arkham game, albeit a slightly toned-down one. I was a little disappointed to see that Joker is the real villain ohhh nooooo, but I really wasn't expecting otherwise. I mean, he's a fun villain when he's well-written, but I'm just a little bored of him being front-and-center by now. On the plus side, my favorite villain, Riddler (sorry, it's Enigma now), is back and is as chatty as ever. All in all, I still like the game and will likely play it obsessively until I beat it or it glitches itself to death.

Gunpoint: A short but fun and well-written little stealth-puzzler. Great characters, great atmosphere, fun gameplay, awesome soundtrack. Very short, which is a bit disappointing, but well worth the price of admission.

Dear Esther: Absolutely BEAUTIFUL. It's not for everyone, as it's less of a game and more of a walk-through abstract story, but it's deeply emotional. Every time you play, you have a chancxe of recieving different parts of the story. And every part of the story can change your overall perception of what's going on. Who are you? WHo is the narrator? Is this real or a dream? It never directly tells you, and as such your interpretation of the story will likely differ from other people's. It's funny how something so abstract can be so emotionally moving.It's -nly about 2 hours long, though.

The Stanley Parable: Like Dear Esther, this is more of a story than a game. Unlike Dear Esther, though, this game is hilarious, ominous and absurd all at the same time, where your story depends on your actions instead of a randomized algorithm. Sometimes, your narrator is a friend. Othertimes he's foe. Still other times he's just as lost and confused as you are, and occasionally he's a she. There really is no clear answer to what The Stanley Parable "is."It lacks the emotional sucker-punch of Dear Esther but makes up for it in humor, intrigue, and it's encouragement of exploration "just to see what happens." It's fairly short and can be a bit boring after a while, though.

Mark of the Ninja: A stealth/action game by Klei. I was surprised at this game's depth and involvement at first, since it looks like it was done in Flash and designed for tablets. I was wrong. This game has great sneaking mechanics and nifty stealth kill combos. The latter surprised me at first- the art style didn't look like something that would accomodate a ninja stabbing a sword through someone's chest. It's a fun game, although I personally find it hard to play for long periods of time without finding it tedious. I still recommend it though.

Don't Starve: Another game by Klei. I had never heard of this studio prior to this year, and then I end up playing 2 very different games from the same studio.Don't Starve is a wilderness survival game where you must use science and magic to stay alive in a demonic land created by the mysterious Maxwell. It has a really neat art style, very sketchy ink-drawing 2D figures in a 3D environment. It's fun, but very unforgiving. If you die, you have to start again from square one in a completely new randomly-generated world.

Mass Effect (1): Eh, it's KOTR with no lightsabers and a shitty date-sim added in. GO AWAY KAIDEN AND LIARA, NO ONE LIKES YOU.

Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep: Very funny writing and a surprisingly fun concept. Not what I expected for as Borderlands DLC, but a pleasant surprise. Never finished it, since I'm waiting to play it in co-op with my sister.

Torchlight II: I got bored of the original Torchlight, but have not yet had that problem with the sequel. Fun upgrades, nice variety in levels.


Penny Arcade's Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 4: I liked the first 2 installments from Hothead. I found 3 to be a little tedious and much less funny. 4 is the middle point between the Hothead games and 3- It's got funny moments, and the gameplay is fun, but it felt a bit lacking in some story areas.