The games of my year

[Prpl_Mage]

Reviews and stuff.

So. 2009 started (I guess) with the present from my parents. A Ps3. Lovely.
Didn't have the chance to try it until I got home from where we were.

Awful? Quite so.

So. Let's start by the least appealing genre and the two games me and ma' bro got.

Racing!
Gran Turismo prologue and Motor Storm Pacific race
First of. What's the point of releasing a game that isn't finished? The Gran turismo game for the PS3 is a gran turismo only it isn't. It's the game in basic but there's a lot missing and there are quite some things that needs tuning up.
This game just lacks any praise from my point of view. I mean. You drive a car. That's it. No stars, no red shells, no ring outs and no demolition. At all! It's just racing for people who like racing. And my brother is that person. Realistic racing game - get a car already.

And then we tried motor storm instead. This game proves that you don't need to add the option to drop banana peels or fake item boxes to make a racing good.
Instead we add lots of demolition and explosions. It's racing. But it's a lot of off-road racing. And instead of having different characters to play as or different models of cars to choose from. We have different sizes. Motorbike, ATV, buggy, some small car, rally car, the big rig and a monster truck. Each of the vehicles shine in their own area. And different vehicles can dominate others.
Loads of fun to get together with some friends and play that there vs mode where you don't want to be last. More fun with VS rather than the campaign mode though.


So then, I had my 2 games for the PS3 and my brother whored that Gran turismo...
So I decided to jump back to the good ol' wii.
Here's the thing. I got this snowboard game. Shaun white or something. And then my mother got wii fit(she never used it) so I kinda tested both.

So. Next up is the Wii balance board!
Wii fit and Shaun White's snowboarding
So. For all you exerciseholics who like to train and lap daily. This might seem like one of them TV shop thingys.
But it's actually quite good. You have a bunch of different exercises and moves, some yoga and some puch-ups and so on. Quite fun I guess. It's kinda like training for people who don't really have their own pass they do X times a week.
Although you realise that the wii balance board can lie from time to time. Like doing sit-ups. Sometimes it doesn't register your motions because it say your feet doesn't have enough pressure. But nintendo actually managed to make most exercises work.

What about the snowboarding? Well. Basically you go down a steep hill( oh shocker!) and you can do trixs in the jumps and stuff. Nothing that haven't been done before. but they made it possible to use the wii balance board so I decided to only use it. After getting past a bunch of stuff in the campaign mode the batteries ran out. So I switched to the wii mote. And jebus friggin' christ. It was like 10 times easies. Just jank that mote back and forth in every jump and you earn tons of points.
I was a it dissapointed at that moment.
The game itself is nothing that really stand out. You have the classic time trails, fight against a competitor or collect the "flags" on your way down. And VS is pretty much the same. Nothing special. Brawl is better.


After I realized that batteries get depleted to easy I moved on from my present from ma bro'.
World of warcraft: wrath of the lich king
[spoiler]
I once again logged in as my shaman. Entered the world and realized that there had been a lot of updates during those 8 months of absence. Talents needed to be replaced and there had been new travel rules and item changes. God knows how long I read through the update files.
But I managed to get back in the game in the end. Made my way to the Northred and quested my way up. Getting groups to instances is as tiem consuming as ever so I actually got to lvl 80 without doing a single WotLK dungeon. And those of you who've played WoW or any other MMORPG might have realised the following fact "Your gear sucked?".
Hell friggin yeah.

By the time I tried to do dungeons people didn't want me. As the time came for Naxx, I needed better gear. But then how am I supposed to get better gear when no one in the guild can be bothered to get a group for a dungeon? If there was no raid they all played on their alts. Frustrating to say the least.
Instead I set out to do what I am good at. Enduring. I endured 25 daily quests a' day. And I finished all quests in northred in hopes of getting good gear. I must say that money was no problem. I bought some weapons at the auction house and so on. I managed to get exhalted with most all but one Northred factions so I decided to repp up with the Outland factions whle I was at it.
1 week after I had strained myself so badly to get the outland rep Blizzard releases a patch that makes it easier to get reputation with factions. Yeah. Thanks a bunch.

In the end I managed to work my way up(mostly thanks to ma' bro again who acted healer and tank when the fuckers leave the group at the last boss). I got some naxx epics and I bought a Mammoth for 16k gold. It even came with two vendors. Pretty neat.
But when the Ulduar patch was released - I stopped playing.
There's just no point in playing when you don't have the gear for the new raid and the people with gear can't be bothered to help out in the old raid - Naxx.
[/spoiler]

So with all that behind me I went back to my shiny Ps3. My brother got bored with Gran turismo after a while so I decided to see just how good the games actually could be.


The return of PS3
Soul Calibur IV and Resident evil 5

Soul calibur, tekken with sharp edges. Pretty much.
The latest game added critical finishes, a new kind of customization with the skills and all. And took away the fun of playing single.
The previous game was awesome in all ways. The tales of swords and that there other thing. It made the game great, it made ir enjoyable to have different and original modes. SC2 had a great "campaign mode" as well with the map and all that.
But in the latest game? There's just this arcade mode like thing but with an intro and epilogue. I expected fireworks and barely got a spark.
The "story" mode is basically 1 battle, then a battle at either the castle or on a raft, then there's a cutscene of a tower rising, you fight an anime character, you fight in the tower and then you fight the final battle on top of the tower against either nightmare, siegfried or algol. And the cutscene before fighting any of them is the same. The third and second game did at least have some kind of story to it. Like Valdo fighing Yoshimitsju made a scene appear and so on.
They added this "Tower of souls" thing where you fight either up or down. One way is pretty much survival and the other is missions. Hard as **** but they could have done better.
                            And then we have the online mode. Oh christ how I sweared over that thing.
First off. Never play in special. Secondly - get ready to swear.
Basically Namco failed with one thing. If you turn off your game (like the power button or disconnecting the network) when you lose an online battle - it doesn't count as a lose for you or a win for your opponent.
So when you finally win a battle against these cheapskates they disappear before you get your points for winning. And it makes you so goddamn mad.

Anyway I had Resident evil 5 to soothe my mind.

Resident evil 5 is basically resident evil 4 but with new story and a lot better graphics.
Same kind of aiming and even the AI.
The inventory is changed though and some things became a bit harder. You have all the difficulty levels and the puzzle aspect of resident evil is gone once again. I kinda miss the whole "Survival horror" of resident evil. Right now it's more about scoring headshots.
I enjoyed the game. Cursed at the teamates lacking AI when it comes to helping me out. Realized that you can't come anywhere with the AI help if you're going for the higher difficulties. At that special mission which is basically a battle where you are stuck in a truck - the teamate doesn't shoot enough so you can survive. They screw up over and over.
Great game though but you'll need a friend for it. The whole mercenaries is so annoying that having that buddy of yours watching your back and picking up grenades will save your day and get you the high-score you need.


And that was the return of the PS3. Actually I got another game after completing RE5 but I'll hold on to that for a bit. Kinda realized that this post is getting pretty long so I better double post and edit that one. Yepp. I'll do just that.

[Prpl_Mage]

DS was given some love!
Final fantasy crystal chronicles : echoes of time and Pokémon Platinum

Two games that made my DS work it's sweat badly.

First of is FFCC2-2. The first DS FFCC rigns of fate was a pretty fun game in my eyes. But there was something missing.
But hell yeah, square did it again and managed to grab onto that dying idea and get it out of the snake pit and give it a flamethrower.
Because that's pretty much what happened. Spells cost MP, special attacks cost MP, you can use most weapons, there are weapon classes, and you get loads of new passive abilties by levling. You have the ability yo add gems into weapons and equipment and you can break equipment to get gems and so on. It's amazing how you can take one game and pimp it so badly.
And instead of having easy, normal, hard and very hard. They added 10 different very hards. So you have easy, normal and hard. And then you have round 1- 10 on very hard. It's so hard that you actually need to call your friends over to help you out. I'm bloody glad that I have a friend like that.
But you actually can have party members this time and it's lovely, they like to suck a lot but they can actually be quite helpful.
There is only praise I can give on this game. I loved it that much.

And then we have Pokémon. Diamond and Pearl were a bit dull. There were so few pokémons in the game that it seemed like you fought them all over and over and over.
And then nintendo realized this. And so so goddamn love when they realize misstakes. Becasue they fixed it with flying colours.
The game got a whole bunch of new material. Platinum even changed the story a little. More pokés, larger battle frontier, some new sidequests and loads of pokémons. It's great.
I still play it every now and then trying to farm some items and such. And I caught everything I can so far. Sooooo. If anyone got a spare: Mew, Celebi, Deoxys, Jirachi, Darkrai, Manaphy or Arceus let me know. They are the only pokémons I miss now.
Great game though, it made a good game even better(Although Bronzomg can suck the balls of all that is holy).
Still waiting for HG and SS to be released in Europe.


PS3 - rise of namco: the third sequel
Eternal Sonata and Tekken 6

Eternal sonata looked like the game I would like to play. And I was right. I called my good buddy over who I used to play a lot of tales of symphonia and the embarked on this new journey. It was fun, interesting and pretty hard. The bandai knows how to make the game original and interesting. We saw some features I haven't seen in other games like the light and dark skills depending on where on the field you were placed. The whole battle system itself is great. The only falll and con of this game is the lack of variation in some of the characters. Most characters like Jazz have 2 skills and then you have a copy of the skills onyl a different element.
Like Heat blade and thunder blade. One is light the other is dark. One deals fire the other thunder. Same animation different shinies.
But it was a fun game. Multiplay is not required in this game though as it's turn based in a sense. But you better know what you're doing or you'll fail.
The secret dungeons were both goddamn annoying and hard. The bosses likes to deal over half of your health if you don't block correctly.
Great game I must say. The story was rather fugged though. And I don't really enjoy history lessons about a pianist in the middle of the game. Also, that certain death scene with the flashbacks just makes me wanna equip a gun and shot that certain person so that certain person dies already. You who played this game - you know what I'm talking about.

And then we have Tekken 6.
It's a huge update from Tekken 5 with new characters, item customization and all that. Boring part is just the scenario mode. It's original I'll give them that. It's more or less "Return of tekken force" but still. You gotta play through this mode to unlock characters you can use in the area which basically is the place you can see the intro and ending movies. In other words - a huge part of the game according to me. Each stage of the scenario campaign is basically "beat up goons till you reach the end and beat a playable character". But then we have 3-4 hidden characters. Mokojin, Yoshimitsu, Roger and Devil Jin. Devil jin isn't so hidden though. You just need to beat the final stage of the scenario campaign to unlock his stage. But for example, to get to yoshimitsus stage you have to break a crate on the hard level at one certain stage and grab the map he drops and then clear the stage. Who the hell figures that out without gamefaqs?
Great game though. But it's kinda like Soul calibur IV. Feels like Namco wrapped these games up quickly so people could play online. It's very VS oriented and I kinda love it. That's that I use them for anyway - to beat the crap out of my friends.
But getting fight money from arcade, survival or tiem trial is the largest fail ever when you can play campaign mode - clear a stage and get the same ammount as a 20steak win.


And here we are at the last couple of months.

Wii points and Sequels
Pokémon rumble, Super mario bros 3 and Tales of symphonia Dawn of the new world
Here's the thing.
Upon needing and craving to get those last pokémons mentioned earlier I've frequently visited the pokémon website in hopes of encountering something along the lines of "Arceus for EU" or something. Instead it was about a release of a wii ware game.
"Neat, more moneywhoring" I thought at first. Then it mentioned a free download demo. And damn I was surprised.
They took something really simple and made something great.
Pokémon Rumble.
It's divided into 2 difficulty levels. Normal and hard. In normal you will encounter the good ol' goodies from R/B/Y. and in hard you'll encounter the new from D/P/P. Each difficulty got C to S rank. Each rank means stronger pokes, more variation and harder "Battle royale"
To skip the basics and just get to the theory. This game is against everything the other games likes to throw at you. To love your pokés and train them yourself. In this game pokémons doesn't get stronger. You have to swap them for new ones. So you use them, and then you sell them afterwards.
The game can be called a mix between diablo and pokemon.
You pretty much kill things on the left and right - reach the end and fight a boss. You can only have 2 moves at the same time though. But you might get the pokemon you defeat on your team.
So at the same time you hack and slash you also collect those 260-something pokes available throughout the game.
You can even play up to 4 people and the madness is crazy. Pokémon flying left and right as you slap hem silly.
Great fun.

The game cost 1500 wii points. So I have 500 left. "What to buy?" I settled for Super mario bros 3. An old classic.
And I gotta admit. This game still entertains me. It's so much fun in such a simple game. Old school mario, sidescrolling, platformer, 8 bit and loads of fun. The hammer bros, kooplings, airships worlds and all that crap makes it return into my nostalgic heart.
I just love this game.

And then the disappointment of the year. The sequel to tales of symphonia. The original was a great game. This on the other hand removed pretty much every aspect of the original game and added a bunch of new features presented in tales of vesperia(or so I've heard).
Interesting part is that you can tame monster, level them and evolve them. get them back to the base creature and evolve it to the other option untill your pet got loads of skills(passive abilities such as crititcal strike, resist poison, fire attack). And the most interesting part is that you can carry over your pets to your new game + file with grade. So I started my new game with a lvl 95 fenrir that 1hit ko pretty much everything.
The game's story is pretty much fucked, you barely get a full party to begin with, the characters from the previous game comes and leave and their equipment is locked. And they have some locked skills as well. And they can't get experience.
It's a shame. But I played it through. I hoped for so much more but got a fragment of the greatness that ToS was.


But one pleasant surprise:
Borderlands

A game that proved to us all that thinking original when creating a FPS isn't a bad thing. Not sure if I can agree with the whole "FPS-rpg" but still.
It's a first person shooter. With 4 different characters. You have the tank, a sniper, a support character and one that can be stealthy.
You have "Talent trees" like in Wow, and you level up. You can level your weapon skills, and you have stats. You equip armors and weapons and grenade modes and everything have stats. It's not the basic "Magnum > handgun" you can find one magnum with 455 dmg and another one with 123. The whole loot system seems so random that you never know when you find a good weapon.
Gotta say that the game was kinda short in my eyes, a shame really since it's so great with the whole quest board and all. It took a genre I dislike a lot and managed to turn it into I want to play.
Good job 2K!
It's just lovely. I haven't tried the DLC though. The zombie island thing. Gonna try to get my hands at Left 4 dead first.


And then we had christmas. Everyone's favourite time of the year.
Wii gets some fun and PS3 becomes useful again!
New super mario bros wii, Resident evil the darkside chronicles and The Saboteur

The new super mario bros is pretty much the old super mario bros only with tons of moves, walljumping, waddle the wii mote to pick up stuff and so on. It took something old and classic and made it into something full of stuff.
I'm not saying it's a bad thing - this is a pretty fun game and I enjoyed it greatly. But just a fair warning - playing it alone will not really be satisfying. To get these Star coins in the levels you have to do so many odd and self-hating things that playing alone makes you swear at the game as you miss the ledge and have to start the level all over again.
But it's fun. But it's also rather bad in a sense.
In Super smah bros brawl you can run through people, you can run through people. But in super mario bros wii - you run into them, and you block their paths. It's supposed to be a co-op game to some sense but when playing with ma' drunk bro it's somehow more funny to make him fall to his death(but actually more often the other way around) by using him as an extra launch to get higher yourself.
So yeah. kinda annoying to share a small block when moving slightly against your buddy makes him fall into the lava and die...
Still pretty fun.

And then we have the darkside chronicles portraying the parts of the resident evil story that wasn't present in Umbrella chronicles. Resident evil 2 and Code veronica.
And once again they manage to crap a bunch on the storyline. Things doesn't happen as it should, bosses are thrown in on random others are made pretty good. New more annoying enemies. The camera no longer works in your favour in any way. It actually feels a lot more shaky than last game. But they changed the controlls since umbrella chronicles. And it still kinda buggs me. There is no short command for grenades. Grenades is just another weapon. You also have a menu where you can assign weapons to buttons. Oh and you can carry 4 different weapons...
And I miss the fact that herbs were used as you picked them up, this time they stack and you cna use them during the course of the stage as you wish.
Another thing I miss is that I cannot tilt the screen some more to get a better shot. The screen is frozen this time so there can be zombies on the screen's blindspots that gets a happy christmas as they score some cheap hits on you.
But the thing I miss the most is the action click scenes. Like in umbrella chronicles when the scorpion attacks you from the train roof and you have to input the right button clicks to avoid damage.
Still, it lived up to the expectations, if you liked umbrella chronicles - or if you are too lazy to actually play those old awesome games to find out the story behind resident evil: you will most likely like this one as well.

And then the surprise of the year, The saboeur.
I told my parents that I wanted the two games mentioned above but this one wasn't on that list. I had actually never heard about it. I removed the present wrapping and saw "EA" yuck I thought at first. "Blech" I thought when I realised that it was about the french.
And then I sat down and played it.
A surprise and a damn fun game.
3 facts of fun that makes you want to play the game.
1. You fight nazis.
2. You are not a french yourself. You're Irish. So you don't heave to deal with the whole "sacre bleu" business every time you screw up
and 3. You can run over french people with cars without any cops coming chasing.

"What is the game then?" You ask? Well, to make it short. It's GTA gone second world war or something on us.
You're an irishman helping the french resistance in paris to fight off the nazis. Remember germans are not nazis. Nazis are nazis.
Difference from GTA is that you can't kill people and pick up money. They don't shower you in money you really have to earn your money. Also. money is called contraband.
You get contraband for killing generals. But once you've killed that general, he will no longer be around to be killed again. It's like the hidden packages of GTA. You gotta find them and blow them up to get your prize.
The basic locations to destroy to get contraband is: guard towers, sniper nests, fuel depots, armed vehicles, train bridges, radars, radio towers, AA guns and so on.
It might sound dull and all. But it's actually fun. You have the same mission oriented playstyle as GTA but with the addition with freeplay "blow **** up" and stuff.

And there you have it folks. The games I played 2009.
It's been a great year and I hope that I will find new great games to play this year.

Merry new year although one day late!

[Cerebus]

I had the same problem with WoW, which is why I spent lots of time killing lowbies. Well... it's actually one of the reason, for the main one is I just love to be a jerk. But yeah, it sucks having gear that sucks... so long live STV's unfair world PvP and such! (even though it pretty much died at the release of WotLK)

[Almeidaboo]

Well, my games this year would be:

Dragon Age: Origins - Pretty much a perfect RPG. I've nothing to complain about: good combat system, absolute freedom when it comes to decisions and course of action,, remarkable characters, absolutely engaging story, stunnin graphics and EPIC in a general way. It has it's own complex mythology, which shall render mane sequels. I got we eyes in the end. 10/10.

Fallout 3: Although I liked the old Fallouts better, this one is a 9/10. 0.5 because it's more action than RPG, and 0.5 because when "diagonally", the character runs ridiculously, with the same animation as if it was running foward.

Dungeons & DRagons 4th Ed.: That's what I played the most this year ^_^ Oh, if anyone wantes to play, we can do it over the internet, using maptools!

Paintball: I got into paintball last year. Shooting your friends for bruises is just lovely.

[Nandez]

Well, my games this year would be:

Dragon Age: Origins - Pretty much a perfect RPG. I've nothing to complain about: good combat system, absolute freedom when it comes to decisions and course of action,, remarkable characters, absolutely engaging story, stunnin graphics and EPIC in a general way. It has it's own complex mythology, which shall render mane sequels. I got we eyes in the end. 10/10.

I have to agree there not many games are "EPIC" but if you're playing something from Bioware you'll get as close as you can.
I loved the game and still do i'm just sad that it it had to come out now when my interest in rpgs is a quickly dieing flame. Dragon Age is probally one of the only things that is barely keeping it alive.

[HobomasterXXX]

Dragon Age: Origins - [...]stunnin graphics[...]

Really don't agree here, the graphics were pretty subpar.

[Archem]

when "diagonally", the character runs ridiculously, with the same animation as if it was running foward.

Welcome to Bethesda corner-cutting.

[Nandez]

Really don't agree here, the graphics were pretty subpar.

If you were running the graphics on Very High with the HD textures it looked alot better running it any other way is sub-par and just wrong.
Though they could have been better regardless.

[HobomasterXXX]

with the HD textures

Shouldn't have to mod the game to have it look acceptable.

[fruckert]

Agreed, in the sense that you shouldn't.
I am in disagreement to you on the quality of the game though.
It is subpar...but subpar != inacceptable.

[Drakiyth]

Check out World Of Warcraft 3.3 patch..  They made it where you can "cross-server queue all 5 mans now and get in groups in less than 2 minutes"  My fresh mage who is only level 26 is decked in all blues LOL..  It's pretty sick man and you don't even need a guild because it makes the group for you and launches you into the dungeon.  One Tank, One Healer and Three DPS make-ups.   So far, it can be pretty good but sometimes you run into retards but that's bound to happen.

[fruckert]

I stopped playing WoW after Crusade.
Decided to boot it up again a few months ago to try and finally get to 40, to get my mount...yeah, I didn't know that I could then get my epic.
It kind of irritated me.

[Cerebus]

The fact that world PvP was pretty much dead made me stop. And well, lack of money as well. I sure need a job. I hope the next expansion bring world PvP back. It's pretty much my favourite part of the game.

However, even though it lacked it, it's still the game I played the most for this year. Or I think. Either that or older games such as Red Alert 2, Warcraft III and such. But probably WoW, yeah.