Tag Archives: Video Games

Top 10 Games of 2017

Posted by defectivepixeltest on

2017 was a bad year. I’d dress it up as something else if I could, but it’s kind of an any-way-you-slice-it situation. I’m talking personal life here, not games. But considering what a challenging, absolute beatdown of year it was for me, writing this list and playing these games was a nice break from reality.

Games-wise, this year was pretty great. I’ll detail that below. To any that take the time to read some of it, you have my sincere thanks.

Quick obligatory notes:

– This is a ranked Top 10 list with 3 honorable mentions (unranked).

– Each game features a link to one of my favorite pieces of music from its soundtrack. Feel free to listen as you read.

– I’m never able to get to all the games I’d like to by the end of the year. There are always ones that slip through the cracks. I typically like to list up front the games that I had the most interest in that I admittedly didn’t have time to get to. This year, my pile of shame is as follows:

Persona 5
Middle-earth: Shadow of War
The Evil Within 2
Splatoon 2
Cuphead

Now that that’s taken care of, on to the list…

Honorable Mentions:

Uncharted: The Lost Legacy – Naughty Dog

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Hey, sue me. It turns out, I really like Naughty Dog games. Yes, this is the fifth entry in the Uncharted series, but hear me out here.

I admire The Lost Legacy for concentrating Naughty Dog’s strengths into a tighter, more focused experience. The Lost Legacy is 8 hours in length compared to Uncharted 4’s whopping 20. It focuses on a singular area of the world – namely the Western Ghats of India – and keeps its cast small and personal in scope, focusing on the backstories of Chloe Frazer and Nadine Ross.

India is a gorgeous and, in retrospect, obvious locale to set an Uncharted game. The wide palette of vivid colors, lush geography, and Hindu architecture come together to make this game my favorite in the series from a visual perspective.

It’s within this gorgeous area of the world that Naughty Dog pushes forward with design ideas established in Uncharted 4. Chapter 4 of this game is an entire sandbox level, similar to Madagascar in the prior game but greatly expanded in size and density of content. There are puzzles to solve, enemy encounters to stumble upon, and multiple directions to approach a given situation from. Hell, there’s even a map that Chloe will mark up with notes as you explore.

To play an Uncharted game that allows that kind open level design without sacrificing the kind of hand-crafted, finely-tuned content Naughty Dog has always excelled at is thrilling, and has me giddy about what they might do with The Last of Us 2.

But what steals the show here above all are Lost Legacy’s leads. Chloe and Nadine are an unlikely pairing, but serve as excellent foils for one another. Chloe is mischievous, even manipulative, with plenty of dry humor to boot. Nadine meanwhile, is no-nonsense, direct, and prideful in a good soldier sort of way. The times when their rough edges come into contact with one another, often bringing out surprising similarities between them, make for some of the best moments in the game. Compare this to wisecracking Nathan Drake and and slightly different wisecracker Victor Sullivan, or alt-wisecracker Sam Drake, and the difference in dynamic is immediately refreshing.

Uncharted: The Lost Legacy is more than just a look back at the highs of the series. It certainly is that, and one need look no further than its spectacular finale, a thrilling cross-section of Uncharted 2 and 4’s grandest, most ambitious sequences. However, the game is also quite a successful exercise in restraint. The Lost Legacy is the best paced Uncharted game, it’s lean with very little filler, and it proves that you don’t need Nathan Drake to make the whole thing work. Top that off with a splash of exciting gameplay concepts for the future, and yeah, I’ll take that fifth cocktail. It’s still seriously great.

Nier: Automata – PlatinumGames

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Nier: Automata is not the kind of game I’d normally be into. Character action games don’t usually do a lot for me, and neither do the typical designs and tropes of anime. And while I’ve got some serious reservations about parts of this game, there’s really nothing else I’ve ever played quite like it.

Nier: Automata is a game that takes particular joy in testing the constraints of the conventional video game. From its outset, combat is made up of character action swordplay as well as twin-stick shooter and a bit of bullet hell thrown in. At any point during the hack and slash fights, a button is bound to your floating robot pod’s gun. Hit the button and a continuous stream of gunfire is unleashed at wherever the camera is centered.

As you progress, Nier lets you start messing around with its mod-based upgrade system, which it designates as Plug-In Chips. Each Plug-In chip that provides a buff also comes with a size requirement to apply it. This leads to later game decisions like pulling out the Plug-In chip that allows you to see your own health bar, as well as other various pieces of your taken-for-granted HUD, in order to make room for more damage or healing buffs.

Finally, and where it gets most fascinating, is when Nier starts playing around with narrative and plot structure. The ending of Nier: Automata is merely the end of branch [A] of the story, after which the game switches protagonists and begins branch [B], which is an entirely separate campaign. I didn’t find this particularly exciting however, until I reached branch [C] of the story, at which point Nier: Automata really commits to a lot of the fourth-wall breaking, dark themes, and twisting plot points it had merely hinted at before. As the disparate elements of the game come together, the results are truly a thing to behold.

It’s final sequence, an artistic experiment equal in parts Hideo Kojima and We Are the World music video, is so abstract and out of left field that it shouldn’t quite work. However, it meshes excellently with the rest of the game’s themes about memory, sacrifice, and rebirth, and dammit if I just can’t stop thinking about it. It’s one of the most surreal and frankly bizarre endings to any video game of 2017, and for that, I kind of love it.

No one else is making games quite like Yoko Taro. At the start of the year, I wasn’t even aware of his work. Now, consider me a fan eagerly awaiting his next project.

Life is Strange: Before the Storm – Deck Nine

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Life is Strange: Before the Storm probably shouldn’t have worked out. There was a lot working against this game from the start. Not only is it a prequel to the 2015 surprise hit Life is Strange, but it was being helmed by a completely new developer, one which I had personally never heard of before. Then, on top of that, this game was being made during the recent video game voice actor strike, so Ashly Burch was not reprising her role as Chloe Price, who was now being featured as the main protagonist.

Well, consider this déjà vu, because I didn’t expect much from the original Life is Strange back when it was released either, and yet it quickly became one of my absolute favorite games of that year.

Not only is Before the Storm successful in its role as a prequel, it may well be one of the best examples of one in gaming. It reminds me of all the reasons I fell in love with Arcadia Bay and its colorful cast of characters, while deepening my understanding of and attachment to several of them. Chloe Price was already an instantly loveable blue-haired punk rock chick before, but Before the Storm explores her painful history, re-contextualizing her as the series’ most complex and interesting character.

Before the Storm bears an interesting resemblance to David Lynch’s Fire Walk With Me, in that it examines the life of Rachel Amber, Life is Strange’s missing high school student and Laura Palmer analogue. It also largely eschews the supernatural elements of the storytelling in favor of raw empathy. As such, what we’re left with is a remarkably human story about the messiness of youth, about the budding relationship between Chloe and Rachel. This game excellently portrays the magical, not-quite-sober feeling of a teenage crush, and how the strength of that feeling can pull you towards a sort of righteous recklessness, as every other feeling seems unimportant by comparison. That feeling, as well as the melancholy of Chloe’s family situation, is underscored by an absolutely perfect original soundtrack by English indie folk band Daughter. Just like in 2015 with the original game, I’m still listening to Before the Storm’s soundtrack as I write this list. It’s great stuff.

The original Life Is Strange was about that sense of regret, of second-guessing, and about how even the smallest decisions, viewed across time, can become life-altering events. And if we could just go back and say something different, speak up when we were quiet, that maybe, just maybe, we could fix everything.

Before the Storm, by contrast as a prequel, is about the sense that, try as you might, the events of the world point toward a singular conclusion. We might change things along the way -maybe we don’t yell at our mom, maybe we do stick up for the kid being bullied, maybe we share that kiss- but the end result is always the same. Chloe’s dad isn’t coming back. Rachel will go missing and wind up murdered. Step-douche and mom are totally getting together, no question. Like any good tragedy though, Before the Storm is about finding beauty and meaning as it goes. It tells us that our choices in life don’t determine how we shape the ending, but how we tell the story along the way.

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Top 10 Games of 2016

Posted by defectivepixeltest on

2016 was a really rough year for a lot of reasons, to a lot of people. It seems like reflection hasn’t been a particularly popular thing to do as we enter this new year, given how eager people are to see the previous year go. However, before 2016 gets written off completely, I want to be sure to reflect on the things from it that brought me joy. I feel it necessary.

I encourage anyone reading this to do their own positive reflection as well. That said, our media is a thing we can all share celebration of. Writing this list of videos games for 2016 has proved a strangely cathartic experience for me, if only because it forced me to think about the year in a manner that wasn’t extremely toxic.

To any that take the time to read some of it, you have my humblest thanks and my best wishes.

A few notes up top:

– I am again picking 3 honorable mentions first before proceeding with the full top 10 list.

– Each game features a link to one of my favorite pieces of music from its soundtrack. Feel free to listen as you read.

– Every year that I do this list, there are inevitably more and more games I don’t have time to get to. I try to list up front the ones I had the most interest in, but missed out on for one reason or another. This year, my regrets are as follows:

That Dragon, Cancer
Hyper Light Drifter
Oxenfree
Obduction

Now, with all that out of the way, let’s move on…

Honorable Mentions:

XCOM 2 – Firaxis Games

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XCOM 2 kicked off 2016 right, all the back in January. This sequel to one of my favorite games of 2012 made lots of smart improvements to the core of XCOM, while still retaining the oppressive tone and beat-your-ass-into-the-ground difficulty I loved about Enemy Unknown.

Firstly, XCOM 2 adds a stealth mechanic, meaning that rather than constantly being on the defensive from alien ambushes, careful players who stick to cover can spring devastating traps of their own. This solves one of the biggest issues I had with the previous XCOM, which was that it often felt like you were walking into a hornet’s nest, hoping the first stings weren’t too bad. Here, some sense of tactical control is given back to players who know how to set up crossfires.

The addition of stealth is not a crutch, however. XCOM 2 is every bit as punishing as the previous game, if not more so. For starters, several missions here have strict turn timers for players to complete an objective and reach evac. Any soldiers that don’t make it to evac in time are dispassionately left behind. There’s little room for error in these missions, and the timers themselves require players to make riskier moves than they would otherwise make. In these missions, run-and-gun Rangers really shine as a class.

Yes, the artificial limits on number of turns allowed can feel pretty game-y, as there isn’t a ton of justification for why the dropship can’t wait on a soldier who missed getting aboard by one tile. But the way it alters the game dynamic for certain missions is worth the slight silliness it incurs along the way.

XCOM 2 was a fantastic strategy sequel, with smart improvements to character classes and mission structure that made for some of the most satisfying – and, of course, seriously brutal – moments of the year. The final mission of this game is a no-holds-barred gauntlet. For me, everything came down to a last ditch effort sniper shot aimed at the head of the final boss. When it connected, I was so surprised, I almost leapt out of my seat. How many strategy games can you say give you a reaction like that?

Dishonored 2 – Arkane Studios

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I thoroughly enjoyed the original Dishonored for being a modern spiritual successor to the hardcore first person stealth games of yore, such as the Thief series. The supernatural abilities that it gave players were brilliant in that they were designed to streamline the least interesting elements of stealth games. Rather than waiting for a patrolling guard to turn his back, simply teleport behind him. Rather than getting caught and sloppily fleeing from combat, simply freeze time momentarily while you slip back into the shadows.

All of that and more makes its way into Dishonored 2. The level design is sublime, with dozens of pathways and options for vertical traversal that reward experimentation and curiosity. Not only that, but entire optional objectives and mini-storylines dot the periphery of each level. From a design perspective, this is a seriously great sequel and one of the most impressive games of the year.

However, my primary issue with the original game still persists here. The world and characters, realized with as much gorgeous art design as they are, are just horribly dull and uninteresting. I normally wouldn’t take much issue with this, but given the sheer volume of lore and backstory that was written for and sprinkled into every nook and cranny of this game, the fact that so much of it feels lifeless is seriously disappointing.

Misgivings aside, skulking around the various manors, corridors, and streets of Dishonored 2 was some of the most fun I had playing a game in 2016. The Clockwork Mansion in particular was an amazing cross section of level design, world-building, and sheer creativity that took me by complete surprise. Had more of the game been infused with as much life and intrigue as that mission, this game might have placed much higher on my list.

The Last Guardian – Sony Interactive Entertainment & genDESIGN

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As I sit here to write this, it feels a little surreal. The Last Guardian is a game that I never thought I’d actually be able to play at all, much less be a game that I would enjoy so thoroughly. I remember being excited to finally get to play this way back in 2009. Since then, it’s become something of a running gag in the industry whether this thing was ever going to be released at all.

Well, at long last, here it is. Playing the final product, you’d be hard pressed to guess that this game has been trapped in development hell for years. The fact that The Last Guardian turned out as good as it did was one of the biggest surprises of the year.

The promise of an animal companion in a game that players would really, truly care about has been chased after for years, yet it’s never really been successful. The Last Guardian is the first game to finally realize that vision in a way that feels meaningful.

A lot of that starts with the way the game handles AI. Trico isn’t under direct player influence in the way that most AI companions are. He misbehaves, gets distracted, even outright ignores you, in much the same way that a wild animal might. In doing that, Trico can have one of two effects, depending on the player. For players with less patience and more calloused hearts, navigating an environment with Trico can become an enormously irritating task. However, I found myself, surprisingly early on, not thinking about Trico in terms of AI path-finding and what was and wasn’t a scripted moment, but rather as this dynamic and believable beast that I was interacting with. In its best moments, interactions with Trico were delightful, surprising, even terrifying.

In a year that seemed, at times, almost aggressively insincere, The Last Guardian was a breath of just the opposite. Despite all its development troubles, the final game is a triumphant, gorgeous, and ultimately deeply moving tale about a boy and a beast. It doesn’t have the haunting mystique of a game like Shadow of the Colossus, which is still certainly Ueda’s masterpiece, but it feels pure in what it is and uninterested in chasing that game’s long shadow.

It’s easily the most heartfelt game of 2016, and a clear reminder that Fumito Ueda is one of the most unique and necessary voices in the industry today.

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