Games of 2013, Happy New Year People!

[Prpl_Mage]

New years Tradition! Me posting all the games I played during the year of 2013. If you're gonna question whether or not this is a tradition then check the threads of previous years:

2009
http://www.charas-project.net/forum/index.php?topic=26386.0

2010
http://www.charas-project.net/forum/index.php?topic=27305.0

2011
http://www.charas-project.net/forum/index.php?topic=28056.0

2012
http://www.charas-project.net/forum/index.php?topic=28583.0


So, another year and another eventful life. Or well, at least if we measure it in games. For the first time I spent the summer on the Steam summer sale and got more games than I had the time to play. So I still have dungeon siege 1-3, bioshock 1-2, the witcher 1-2 and Tomb Raider waiting for my attention.



So without further waste of space. Behold the wall of text in the order of PC, 3DS, Wii U, PS3 and PSP:

PC:

Mass Effects:

Mass effect
A simply amazing game this one. It's pretty much dragon age but in space. Even the story of the game reminded me of dragon age: Dragon age, you get your *** kicked by darkspawns and try to convince people that a new blight is coming with a dragon and everything and you travel to different places and try to enlist help. Mass effect, a human colony is attacked by geth and you find out about a reaper invasion. No one believes you so you travel to different places and try to get some proof. The game got some neat sidequests and tons of morality choices, you choose between classes and gear up yourself and your partners. There are romance options and trust missions. Awesome. Also elevators everytime you try to enter the city.

Mass effect 2
The game moved away from Mass effect 1's dragon age-like gameplay and made it more 3rd person shooter like. Your guns have ammo and you simply unlock weapons and assign them to your crew. Weapons are also the only thing you can effect on your crew, the rest is locked. There is some less focus on stats and the sockets on gear is gone. The story was honestly kind of crap. But the gameplay made it interesting. Also, pretty much all old characters end up as NPCs and you get a much greater number of peeps to join you who you can romance with. The ending scenario is possibly pretty known to the internet by know and the fact that you can lose some of your characters unless you played your cards right. Also, I loved the fact that you carried over information of your previous game to this one. Like the status of certain things. Small effort but I loved it. Kinda hoped that Dragon age 2 would have done something similar instead of just starting a new story arch.

Mass effect 3
This game lost even more rpg like elements and refreshed the crew once more. New characters and new city hubs. Earth is under attack and the alien world don't give a ****. The threat you warned everyone of in Mass Effect 1 is now finally attacking and things are going terrible for the world. Some things in this game make little sense though and the reapers have kinda turned into the same thing as darkspawns in dragon age. Infecting people to make corrupted forms of them to join their army. The Asarii are turned into Banshee's and so on. Kind of boring in a sense. Great adventure though and interesting take on fighting of the reapers and liberating the galaxy. People didn't like the ending of it though, but besides some super natural elements - it kinda felt like it was the only way to go.

Dark Souls
One of the best games I've played actually. It's kind of old school in the sense that you don't have anyone holding your hand and telling you where to go. You're in a land of undead and it consist of some different areas. You are free to roam but obviously must complete some stuff to progress in other places. Choosing the thief class or starting with the master key saves you from a lot of areas that are more or less simply out to kill you. 'Cuz that's what the game does best. It kills you, and when you die you don't get game over, you start from your last save point but your corpse is still where you died and everything respawns. Luckily, the corpse only holds your currency  but you can only have one corpse at a time, so die on the way and you lose all your souls. You also use those to level up and everything else. Still, the "pro gamer" direction the game took speaks to me. Loved it to death. Hoping that the sequel is as good.

Age of empires 2 HD
A classic reborn in HD. But lets face it. It's the same game only fitted to suit your wide screens. Also, new graphic for fire, water and the farms (the farms look like ****). Everything is done as flat images so there wasn't a lot they could improve I suppose. Still, being able to play online with your buddies is a great thing. Although I have to admit that I understand the game a lot better now than when I was a kid.

Worms revolution
Another new worms game, this one is in 3D but still a platformer worms. You have different types of worms (although you need to earn gold to unlock them for your team) and some new weapons. The coolest addition is the water and physics objects. There are puddles of water that can appear on the stage, making a hole will make the water pour, throw an explosive and it will rain. Worms caught in water are dragged along (which makes some great new ways to kill 'em) and standing in deep water makes you lose hp each turn. So it's a good game but being 3d kinda messes with your perception of distance and jumps, speed and area of effect on weapons. Also, ninja rope sucks.

Deus Ex: human revolution
Another one of those, "stealth if you want to" games. In a close future mankind is messing with the human body and enhances it. You can upgrade a lot of different abilities on your character which is great. But the truth is that you barely needs it. I started off at the highest difficulty, kinda predicting how this game would be. And to be frank, it's not a Metal gear solid. It's not doing a good job at the whole stealth aspect. Example. If you shoot someone in the head and another person finds the body, there's no real change happening. They don't call for backup, they don't replace the guy. They just become a bit jumpy until the timer runs down. If they spot you however, they will kind of automatically know where you are and shoot you to death. Or well, they try to. A shot to the head with your trusty handgun and the problem is solved. Unless you're in the end game when they have helmets. And speaking of the end game, kind of disappointing. And well, I'm not gonna complain more about it. The problem is just that the game barely rewards you for being stealthy, you get some bonus cash or so. But that's it, there's not even a completion screen at the end of the game telling you how made times you triggered an alarm or so. And well, if people complained about Mass Effect 3's ending with the choices. How would they possibly feel about this game's? Sheez.

Starcraft 2: heart of the swarm
I bought this for the campaign. Yeah, you heard me. I bought an expansion back for a RTS game because of the campaign. And to be honest. The campaign was probably one of the worst so far. Because, SPOILERS, you saved Kerrigan from being a Zerg in SC2, but just some mission into this expansion and she willingly zergify herself again. And after killing of a space diety in a FMV, she loses to a lighting trap from Emperor Menghsk himself. So yeah, great missions and all that. But it felt like it could've been a lot better. I didn't play a lot of pvp mostly because my buddies felt done with SC2. Which is kind of sad, great game.

Bioshock Infinite
I didn't play the previous games but was told that I didn't have to as long as I knew about the lighthouse and a city called Rapture. True enough, this game is amazing. FPS game with some extra features, like magic. You get the help of the time and space affecting Elizabeth and there are lots of people to kill. The story felt solid right 'till the end where I felt like they kinda went ahead too fast. Great atmosphere and setting, borderlands-like vendor machines and voxphones(called Echo devices in borderlands) I'm thinking about getting the DLC scenario for it but figured that I better complete the other 2 games first since it seems to be a homage to them.

Lego Lord of the Rings
Whoever thought that Lego's big new thing would be entertaining video games? I didn't at least. But all these movie based games are surprisingly entertaining. The controls are simple and there's not a lot of difficulty spike. But it's so good. The games make fun of the movies, you see adorable lego versions of everything and most of the areas and stages are composed of Legos. There's also the collection of additional characters, items and sidequests. In this game. characters have different kinds of abilities. All small characters can crawl through holes, elves are great at jumping and dwarves can smash stuff. Then you can craft items that hold the same abilities as the characters. Like the elven jumping boots, the mythril axe, the fireworks etc. It's great fun and lots of collectables. Although you sometimes get sidequests for areas you haven't visited or for stuff that you can't get to because you don't have the right character/item.

FTL
Actually a really great game but it pisses me of. It's an arcade like game where you play till you die and then you start over again. You have a spaceship and a crew, some missiles and fuel. You're on a quest to get to the other side of the galaxy and if you stray too long your enemies will catch up to you. The game is kind of turn based though and no countdown so that's great. Each time you jump to a new area, the game progresses, and each area holds a surprise based on where you are. It could be an enemy spaceship, a sidequest that MIGHT work in your favour or just a solar flare or whatnot. Great fun until you get some bad luck 3 jumps in a row and float through space with a burning ship and only 2 crew members left with a lack of missiles. The combats are fun and interesting but the AI can kinda screw you over some times. Kill ships to earn cash to upgrade your own ship. Never managed to beat the final boss thing but it's fun to just play it from time to time.

Terraria
Got it and loved it. Mining, building, crafting. Monsters, weapons, bosses. Secrets. Everything I ever wanted. I loved this game for the same reason as I loved Dark Souls. No one is holding your hand (although an actual explanation of how to build a valid house would be nice). I played it and loved it and crafted and killed, and upgraded and built and defeated bosses and finally looked at the wiki for all the stuff I missed. Then when I felt like I had done everything there was to do: They released a patch some months later with so much more contents that it's mad that they didn't charge me for it. New biomes, more creatures. More armours, more items, more materials, new bosses, additional secrets like the pyramids. More furniture, different types of wood. new armour sets with cooler bonuses. more combinations of accessories that you always wanted but didn't know about. Simply amazing. Fast forward and the halloween patch is out adding even more contents to the game including all the vanity armours (just looks).

Torchlight 2
Ever since I played Diablo 3 people kept saying that Torchligt 2 is better. Now, I don't mean to be that guy, but how? The intro movie looks like it's for a flash game or adventure quest. You need to log in to play this one as well and yeah. Lots of stuff. I played it some with a buddy but in the end I kinda got tired of it, enemies were pretty basic and so were the skills. Graphics wasn't all that interesting. It was pretty cool that they went with the whole "you get skill points and place them in what you want", but it's not enough. Also pets, who wouldn't want a pet Alpaca?

The last remnant
A Square enix engineered Rpg like game. You control armies/groups in battle rather than individual characters. But you just say stuff like "be aggressive" "heal up", "use SP" and so on and it's like. Yeah. Not as good as other games. The story is kind of slow and the main character is annoying, they are using some wierd physics engine that makes it look odd as well. It didn't really hook me, especially the battle system which is like the most important aspect of a game like this. I kinda expected something star ocean like.

Borderlands 2 season pass
Got Borderlands 2 last year and decided to get the DLC season pass this year. I don't regret a single thing. Mr Torgue's campaign is probably one of the best things ever. The humour is amazing and over the top. Same goes for the Pirate Booty and Hammerlock's hunt. And last but not least Tiny Tina's raid on dragon keep. Great DLC's, lots of new weapons and challenges and bosses and enemy types and vehicles and areas and whatnot. The only problem is that you don't know when in the story you want to branch of from the main story to play them. You end up being kinda overleveled in the end. Also, upon clearing a DLC campaing you unlock 1 or more super badass bosses that proves some serious challenge and rewards you with some serious loot. Let's just say that I couldn't really beat them with my buddy being only 2 people. And they released a 3rd difficulty level, adding 11 more levels and then a new true hunter pack with 11 more levels and an area with a serious gauntlet. So hard! Also Psyhco class, so amazing.

Final Fantasy XIV beta
I signed up for the beta of their realm reborn. It was interesting and the game looked simply amazing. Graphics were nice and the areas looked great, monsters had some nice skins and the city was kind of fancy. But you start in a desert and I've been bored of deserts ever since I played FFXII. The game is a typical MMORPG in a sense, you level up and gain new abilities and the options to equip new items. You complete quests and pick your reward and so on. However, I'm pretty sure I could change my class whenever I wanted to which is nice. But in the end, I didn't get far enough to see any real dungeons or so. Not sure if I'm gonna get it or not, depends completely if I know someone else interested in it.

Dota 2
This game is pretty much a graphical overhaul of the WC3 mod DotA. Since they are doing their own thing they can't use the characters from Blizzard's universe so they're changed. But some only slightly. The game is pretty much the same but a lot of things have improved. The game is what we today call a moba or something. It basically means that you have two teams locked in a battle against each other on the same terms since nothing you do in the current game is carried over to the next, gold experience etc. It's on steam and it's free, so why not? It's great fun and all that. But you kinda need some people to play with or you end up with a bunch of Turkish, Russian, Greek, Spanish or whatever people who insists on not using English.

Elsword
A typical Korean MMO with limited play time during the week but not the weekend. You have an overworld and dungeons to play. You get quests to kill X of a certain monster or hope for them to drop randoms. The game is a platformer like beat 'em up and you have different classes to choose from. Then you get a quest to upgrade your class to one of 3 classes and so on. There are ability points to be placed on skills and skills to be added to your keys etc. However, unless you're willing to spend actual money on it. You're only gonna have so much fun. You can double the inventory, unlock additional key bindings to allow more skills, increase play time during weeks etc.

Path of exile
Much like Torchlight, everyone insisted that this would be better than Diablo 3. I'm gonna say "meh". Same thing here as in both Diablo 3 and Torchlight, you ned to log in to play. The game is free so that's always something. But with a free game the servers are... Laggy, and they tend to shut down from time to time. Also, there are lots of glitches happening like you being teleported into a room full of monsters all of a sudden. Or enemies teleporting to you. There's actually not a lot of "rubberbanding" but instead the game kinda freezes. Also, the game is trying too hard to be dark and serious that it's kinda off putting, the story isn't that good and none of the NPCs are likeable or worth saving. Also, for some reason all the female NPCs wear pretty much nothing. Anyway, the final boss is a complete joke when it comes to difficulty. I'm not saying that Diablo in Diablo2 was as well. But y'know. Kinda expect people to learn from it. And playing on the harder difficulies earn you a clean 5 or 10% reduction from your experience when you die. So you're 98% of a level with 2% experience to go and you die and go down to 88% and have to kill stuff for 40 minutes to get back up (or so). This gets kinda dull after a while especially in the hardest difficulty where the bosses don't know what balance is. Anyway, When you level up or finish some quests you gain ability points. You place these ability points in a Sphere grid-like mess. Most of the time you want something special but have to cover like 18 nodes to get there, meaning pretty much 18 levels. Potions aren't consumables. They have charges and charge up upon killing stuff or returning to town, this is good. Also, there is no currency in the game instead certain combinations of items sold give you certain items. Orbs they are called and can be used on items to improve them. For example upgrade a common item to a rare, or to reroll the magical properties of an item. Also to affect the sockets of items. Which brings us to the next point. All skills are gems that you equip in sockets. Kill stuff with the gems equipped and they earn exp and level up. Link a gem with a "+ fire damage" gem and using that skill will now deal fire damage. It's a cool system and all, but to be honest. The same thing is done in Diablo 3 with the runes to skills.

Forced
It's a cool game but a lot better in coop. You have 4 different classes to swap between at any time that each got it's own role, the archer, the heavy hitter, the shield guy and the agile rogue. There's missions to be done and puzzles to solve. Most requiring extra people. The stages change as you play with more people and they had the game in a 4 copy pack. Anyway, the game don't have levels but crystals. Reaching an amount of crystal unlocks the next thing whether it's an additional skill slot, a new passive ability or a new skill entirely. Crystals are earned by completing missions, beating the time and then completing some extra bonus. This totals to 3 crystals for each mission. Great game and nice challenges. Requires team work and all that. Love it.

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3DS:

Monster hunter 3 ultimate
I loved Monster hunter tri on the wii some years back and was kinda sad that they didn't bother to translate the game after to the psp. So I looked forward to this and wasn't turned down. However, I bought controller addition plus thingy for my 3ds to add that extra joystick to it. 'Cuz I just couldn't live with not changing the camera however I wanted to. Anyway, the game is pretty much the same as the wii game only with tons of new contents, the return of 3 weapon types that was missing in tri, a new element/status, lots and lots of new weapons and items. Also, an additional difficulty called G rank that comes after High rank. The single player story now progresses to High rank and you get another shakalakka partner. The amount of monsters compared to last game is huge. MH tri had 18, 3 ultimate have 51. Although about half of those are subspecies (pretty much the same as an original monster but with new elements and attacks and whatnot). Anyway the game is great and work wonders on a portable console. However, to play online you new a Wii U to use as a router in a sense and a non-wireless-network.

Fire emblem awakening
This game did one amazing thing. The option to press a button to increase the speed of turns and battles. Also the option to click another button to skip the entire enemy turn. This made the game like 5 times better than it would've been otherwise. Why? Well you know if you've played a fire emblem. In this game you actually create one of the leading characters called the avatar. Gender, age, hair colour and stuff. Otherwise it's a classic fire emblem. Level up your units, change them into other classes. Get cool weapons and complete missions. It also had the option to summon undeads on previous mission maps that you could fight for some items and exp. A great job overall with tons of characters and several possible support dialogues. And then the game gives you the option to create babies that will join your army in later chapters. basically, get to the S support between two characters and they will marry, resulting in the future chapters to have their offspring as a possible recruit. So lots of possible combinations there as well.

Paper Mario Sticker Star
I wasn't a big fan of Super Paper Mario on the Wii so this was exactly what I wanted, It's an rpg again. Basic changes since last games in the series include: All skills and attacks are replaced by stickers. Meaning that all attacks you do are consumable, meaning you will run out of them. Luckily, you tend to get a lot and the max amount you can carry increases sharply. Also, you no longer earn Experience points and hence cannot level up. HP increase items can be found hidden in the worlds. Another odd thing is that they went with a super mario world like setting. Peach is kidnapped by bowser and you have a world map. Clearing a mission on a world map unlocks the next, finding the secret finish unlocks another. However, the game is great fun, you find objects that you can turn into stickers and use for some great results. The only bad thing is that you have to go back and refind them once you use them unless you want to pay some serious cash for a new one. But the best part about the game is boss battles. People used to say that Shadow of the Colossus didn't need puzzles since the Colossus where the puzzles. But in this case it's actually true. Most bosses have some weakness that you can exploit by using one of the many object stickers at a specific time. Or you could just stack up on the biggest and hardest hitting stickers you can get your hands on and waste them all. Another cool thing is the stumps. Place a mushroom sticker above a stump and it will most likely turn into a shiny mushroom sticker (which is better than a normal). Great game and I had some great fun with it.

Tales of the Abyss
Really hard to get my hands on. I never really liked the sequel to Gamecube's wonder Tales of Symphonia and didn't own an Xbox for tales of Vesperia so this spoke to me. The setting is typical Tales of and you have a wide cast of characters. The characters are likeable besides the golddigger 14 year old kid Anise. While the superior Jade is possibly one of the greatest characters so far. Anyway, the game got all the things you expect of a tales of game with some more features, cool bosses, more grade options for new game+ and an Unknown difficulty that's probably one of the hardest difficulties EVER. Loved it, played it and replayed it with the bonuses I got from all my grade.

Pokemon Y
Latest pokemon and first one on the 3ds. New generation, new pokemon, all in 3d and stuff. I thought nintendo was taking this in the exact right direction. However, they could've stolen the idea of a speed button from their buddies over at the Fire Emblem department. 'Cuz I simply turned off all battle animations 1 hour in and was still annoyed at the time it took for some things. Mega Charizard Y is possibly the best thing that ever happened and the game really challenged me and my pack. However, there is like no post game content to it which is kinda sad seeing how it isn't possible to trade your old pokes to it. However, you have the safaris that allow you to fight 3 pokes per friend added on your 3ds.

Bravely default
Great game if you're into the old style FF. The backgrounds and most areas are pictures rendered and stuff. The art is amazing and you have a job system. It reminds me a lot of FF3 and while it isn't called "Final Fantasy" this surely is one. Much like the old game "4 Heroes of light". You have all the classical FF classes like monk, thief, wht mage, blk mage, red mage, dragoon (now called valkyrie) and so on. Best thing they did was the same thing as Fire emblem awakeing. You can increase the battle speed up to 4X which is a blessing to turn based combat. Also, you can get the game to remember your previous actions and repeat them automatically. Not only that but you can manually change in the options how high you want your encounter rate and if you should get EXP, Jp and gold. When you defend in battle you get 1 extra Bp and you use your BP to take actions. You get 1 Bp at the start of each turn and each action costs 1, so if you use defend once you can use attack twice at the next turn. However, some skills cost more than 1 bp and when you have a negative BP you're character is a sitting duck. You can use brave to get yourself to negative BP whenever you want but it's not really recommended. Also, special skills are based on the weapon you have equipped and the game is awesome. However, the second half of the game is kind of boring, first half is full of some great character progress and stuff though. Oh right, during the game you can rebuild a village which takes real life hours. Each day you can use "update data" to receive 3-5 random "invites" from other players owning the game which increases your villager count by the same amount. So if you just set them to build something and leave the game in sleep mode, it won't take forever to finish And if you use the SP costing Bravely freeze, you gonna have to leave it in sleep mode to recovered that Sp anyway. I have like everything completely done before I was halfway through the game. Great job square!

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Wii U:

Nintendoland
Got this with the Wii U upon purchase and must say that this game is ace. The game consist of several mini games or small games or whatever. Most of them are multiplay and works really good despite being completely lacking in the story department. The ghost game is specially nice and it's kinda cool to play zelda with someone soaking up the aggro in front. Amazing how one of these "testing the engine" games can be so much fun.

Monster hunter 3 ultimate
I got the game to the Wii U as well, this way I could play with other people online on the dreaded G rank. It's actually the exact game as the 3ds version and you can transfer your data between them. But you can only have the data on one of them at a time. Online works great with more or less no lag or servers shutting down. However, the mic on the wii u controller is... crap. Also, French and German people everywhere.

Tekken tag tournament 2
Unlike the non-wii u verison this game had some mini games, volleyball and mushroom battle. Great fun and all that, although not for something serious. Also, all the DLC for real money characters and outfits are in the game already. To unlock the additional DLC outfits however you need to hand over some serious dough. We're mostly talking swimwear here so there's no real loss if you don't want to grind money. The game is really solid and works great to fight over people. However, it's kinda cheaty that you can add moves to the controller pad that you simply need to touch to execute. Also, ninteno based outfits.

Ninja Gaiden 3 wii u
I played MGR revengence and thought it was kind of brutal. This game is far more brutal. Apparently the non wii-u versions weren't brutal. No executions, less blood etc. This game have plenty. The game itself is actually really good, the controls are comfortable and effective and there's lots of different combos to use. There are some additional weapons to unlock and skills to buy with points as well. The game is kinda difficult though, where if you die your max hp is decreased until you reach the next save point. Also, dodging is key or you, well you die. Also, there's some additional contents in this with some appearances of everyone's favourite DoA characters Ayane and Katsumi.

Tank Tank Tank!
A free download that you use micro transisions to get more contents. It was fun for like an hour or so then it got kind of old to be honest. The PVP mode is vastly unbalanced and the boss I bought is so strong that it's nearly impossible to win. And if you do it fast enough you get to a bonus stage that certainly kills you.

Wind Waker hd
Only problem with this remake, like the one of Ocarina of Time is that I'm too good for them these days. My memory of the game is that it was much more difficult and longer. But it wasn't. Also, they removed most of the triforce charts making you find the triforce pieces right away. Which removes the need to spend time hunting sunken treasures and completing mini games. I didn't like it though, my rupees are maxed now because there's nowhere to use them. Also, the swift sail made the game so much better, it changes the wind automatically to the direction you're sailing. You just need to win it in the auction house. Also, the Hero's mask (allows you to see the enemy's hp bars) are no longer a reward for handing in Joy Pendants, it's in a chest in the dungeon at Outset island instead. And last thing is that you no longer need to collect a fire fly from forest haven to complete the colour pictobox quest. And in turn, the game now tells you when you took a photograph that will be valid for a figurine.

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PS3:

Metal gear rising Revengence
It's not a Metal Gear Solid, it's Metal Gear Rising. Taking on the role of cyber ninja Raiden as he hack and slash his way through cyborgs to save the world. Or something. The game have most of the typical traits of the MGS series: Cardboard boxes, option to sneak past enemies, codec conversations and antagonists with powers. However, the setting is so futuristic that it feels kinda odd. Either way, the game is great as a hack and slash and offers lots of challenges (especially on the harder difficulties) I attempted the final difficulty (revengence) on a clear save but could barely get through the first mission. So I gave my buddy the challenge and he nailed it. It was really impressive. It's a great game and the VR missions are also challenging. However, I didn't get any of the 3 DLCs.

Tales of xillia
It's a Tales of Game and I got it after Abyss since I wanted to play one coop. However, I wouldn't really suggest being more than 2 people playing this coop since one of the big things in the game is Linking where you assign one character to act as support to the other. If the supporting character is a player, he loses control of the character. 3 people wok if someone likes to be a ranged caster or dedicated healer. But I wouldn't suggest it otherwise. The story is interesting and the characters are... Special. The battle system has been vastly improved since Symphonia and Abyss, being faster and more customizable. You can have up to 18 skills eqquiped on your characters and there are the unisions attacks available when linked with other characters. You have AC which is like action points, you spend 1 point for each thing and regain while standing still for like 0,5s. These let you spam stuff like pow hammer 5 times in a row without any noticable cooldown. Also, you have an open Sphere grid like level up system where you learn new skills and passives by placing a point whereever you want to. Great game but Japan has already a sequel to it released, I hope it gets here as well.

Kingdom Hearts Remix
It's the Final Mix version (never released in EU) with KH CoM and then 385/2 days in movie form. The new enemies for the Final Mix version where lovely and imaginative. Although the new colouring of certain enemies felt wrong. The game is still solid even if it's been like 10 years since release. They also added more gummi ship pieces and the gummi ship challenges. The only problem I have with it is that the new synchronize system requires a lot of materials only dropped by the special enemies and they aren't the easiest to come by. Also, the mysterious Figure fought in Castle Oblivios was really worth the money.
Square announced that they would release a HD remake of KH2 with Birth by Sleep and ReCoded as a movie next. I'm looking forward to it. Fighting all the organization members in KH2 and the extra bosses in BBS.

Saints row 4
So this game is whack. It's so off the charts that there's just no way to measure it. You create your character and the build and everything(the stat "sex appeal" applies to your junk if male or boobs if female). I went with that nice non-american accent which did wonders to all the dialogue. Anwyway, remember when video games used to have cheat codes that let you fly and stuff? Well, this game is like that. Only that it's no cheat. You have fire balls, you can freeze stuff, telekenisis, super jump, running at the speed of light and so on. There's no point in getting a car(although you can summon them whenever you want without a garage). You can also use one of the many new amazing weapons to wreak havoc. Like the black hole gun, or the dubstep gun, the abductor ray and so on. Great game, if you're into games like GTA but complete madness.

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PSP:[/b]

Lord of Arcana
If you like Monster Hunter but didn't like how God Eater had all those characters and stuff. You're gonna like Lord of Arcana. This game is pretty much a monster hunter but with Mythical Beasts instead of huge dinosaurs and dragons. The battle don't take place in real time but when you touch a monster you get teleported to a battle arena(like in Crisis core) where you duke it out. Besides mythical beasts you also have access to magic spells, some skills based on your weapon type and summoning magic. Upon defeating one of the "large monsters" you need to enter a series of battle commands to finish the monster off. These finishers are really flashy (and kind of violent) and if you fail they restore some life and will attempt to escape. Anyway, much like in monster hunter you defeat monsters to get items that you in turn uses to craft and upgrade armour and weapons down different paths.

Dead or Alive Paradise
Apparently the most sold game for the PSP ever. I kind of get it, but it's still kinda disturbing. Why did I get this? Well, I got it from my brother who's kind of a joker. But in reality this game kind of suits me. Am I a person who enjoys repeating a boring task over and over again for the sake of getting something 100% clear? Yes. Can I handle monotonous tasks over a long period of time? Yes. Do I jerk off to DoA characters in skimpy bikinis? No, actually not.
Game is simple. Choose one of the characters and spend like 7 days(morning, noon, evening) on an island. Waste time playing a jumping minigame, volleyball or relax at different locations (which gives you a unique scene of them frolicking around). Anyway, there are like a hundred or so different swimsuits in the game and each character can buy only some of those, the rest needs to be given to them as gifts. To earn the cash to buy them you need to play the mini games. Also, to give the gift to someone you kinda need to party up with them. And to party up with someone you need to bribe them with gifts, certain gifts for certain girls wrapped in the right colour of paper. So well, in the end, you kinda want to get all the characters to have all the swimsuits to complete the list, and then to unlock all these relax scenes for each girl to complete the gallery. And you mostly spend a lot of time playing volleyball (which is surprisingly fun) to earn the money necessary to buy all the crap you need. So yeah... Still kinda surprised that this game was allowed here while they banned the 3DS game for having minors (Ayane) doing suggestive things.

Final Fantasy Dissidia 012: Killing Feral Chaos
So yeah, got this game some time back and got stuck in the final episode (post-game content) against a lvl 95 Feral chaos. That guy is a total ***hole but in the end I managed to farm some materials and grind up some other characters to lvl 100. In the end, I beat his *** and could progress to the other half of that episode. Which wasn't as fun as it sounds. The other half of it got enemies on lvl 100-130 or so. Meaning that you will always be at a disadvantage and kinda need to cheese it to win. This calls for some infinite painful dungeons. I ended up beating the final lvl 128 Feral Chaos, the final boss, and unlocked him as a playable character. Go me! Upon unlocking his alternative outfit for like 3000BP I consider this game completed.

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And yeah, that's "all".

How was your year? Busy playing GTA and Terraria?

[Archem]

I've been doing my best this year to finish my games. I have a bad habit of never finishing them, so I wanted to change that. While I won't be doing a big write-up like you did, I'll list the games I beat this year by the months they were completed. By the way, my definition of "complete" is "end credits roll", so games like Pokémon may still have lots of post-game content I didn't get to. I'm also not including games that are multiplayer-only or pure sandbox (Minecraft, Terraria, etc.), since there's no point in counting them as they have no real way of being "complete", even they took up most of my free time.

January
Killzone (100%, Platinum Trophy on PSN)
Uncharted 2
Resistance: Fall of Man
Dead Space 2
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
FEAR 2 (and the expansion)
Sleeping Dogs (100% before DLC)
Singularity
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Splinter Cell: Double Agent
Splinter Cell: Conviction

February
Crysis 2
Homefront
Duke Nukem Forever (better than people pretend it is)
Killzone 2 (less fun than the first game, and the controls are a trainwreck)

March
Pokémon Black 2
The Darkness (surprisingly amazing)
Gears of War: Judgement

April
Killzone 3 (huge improvement over KZ2)

June
Shadow Warrior (the late-90s game)
Stealth Bastard Deluxe (go check it out. 2D stealth/puzzle game with lots of Portal influence)

August
Mutant Mudds (100%)
Rainbow Six Vegas

September
Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon (how can a game be this cool?!)
Grand Theft Auto V

December
Far Cry 3
Uncharted 3
Max Payne (started on Xmas)
Max Payne 2 (started on Friday, finished yesterday)

Unknown
Super Mario Land 2

I think I did a good job cleaning up my backlog a little bit. That's 30 games (31 if you count the FEAR 2 expansion) downed in the course of a year, or about 2˝ games completed per month. I will admit that January is a little padded out, since a few of those games had already been started at some point before the year started. Still, complete is complete. I'm interested in seeing how I do next year.

[SaiKar]

Oh hey, this. I joined up last time again. I'll type up my reviews too.

[SaiKar]

Aquaria
It feels like Metroid, but underwater. You swim around as a mermaid and sing and shoot at enemies. Literally the smoothest controls I've ever played in a game - its bliss to cruise around. But the game is actually very difficult and has some really cumbersome systems (like needing to cook food to gain healing items) so I've never put down the time to beat it.

BioShock Infinite
I was a big fan of the original BioShock - its world building done so damn right. I skipped 2 because it focused on what I felt was 1's weakest aspect - the little sisters. But Infinite took everything in a different direction and it was damn good. Classic city style meets sci-fi technology with a few heaping doses of religion, patriotism, and unapologetic racism - I can definitely say its a game that isn't afraid to take a few chances. Gunplay was the weakest aspect, even with the vigors, but not bad. Story got a bit thick at the end, and a few of the twists kind of felt like asspulls, but still worth playing.

Dota 2
After nearly losing all my friends due to disagreements I had the wisdom to uninstall this.

Gunpoint
A cute little game about hacking and jumping around as some sort of secret agent, but it ends roughly at the time it starts getting good. They really should have stretched it out over 2-3 times as many levels, because each level was a lot of fun, but there were just too few.

Left 4 Dead 2
I've barely scratched this (picked up when it was free, thanks again Charas!) but it seems to be the same high quality nonsense that Valve is so good at.

Long Live the Queen
A cutesy little thing. Part animated novel, part frustration generator. Not bad, but I don't think it's very long.

Saints Row the Third
I was gifted this and played the absolute hell out of it. The story and difficulty was all over the damn place, but it was just so silly and had so much attitude that I didn't care. An absolute blast to play.

Saints Row IV
Objectively this should be better than SR3 in every way - the super powers you gain are amazing to play with and invoke a real sense of freedom - there's little better than shooting fireballs from your hand while Safety Dance plays in the background - and literally every story mission is pure 100% awesome. Yet I couldn't get into it as much as SR3. I think its because the whole damn game is set in the dark. Seriously, who's idea was it to make a game that you had to squint at for 20 hours? Turn on the freaking sun and you'd have a huge winner. [spoiler]And yes, I know, you can at the end, but that's at the END...[/spoiler] I feel like this is a nitpick, but it really is frustrating that I can't enjoy the action because its all so dark, to say nothing of screenshots.

Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
4X space game where you build fleets and take over planets and ****. It has no story and every game is psuedo-multiplayer (the AI is good enough to put up a nice fight) and it honesty eats more time than it deserves... but still, what's there is top quality.

Sonic & All Stars Racing Transformed
This game deserves more than its utterly awful, goofy title would suggest. It's like Mario Kart, but better in nearly every way, and I'm a huge Mario Kart fan so that should mean something. Brings back memories of Diddy Kong Racing with the whole cart / hovercraft / plane thing, but this time around your vehicle transforms at set points in the course, thus the name. The game gets really clever about this - you may play two laps as a cart, and then the course gets destroyed and you have to play the third as a plane, or you take a detour down a river and swap to hovercraft. Tight controls, shooting missiles at race cars, fun. Also has Vyse and a level from Skies of Arcadia, one of the greatest RPGs evar.

Starbound
So much potential, so many good ideas, so, so unrefined to the point of being nearly unplayable. Seven hours of frustration in, I had to uninstall this. Someone tell me when this becomes actually polished.

Terraria
SPEAKING OF ACTUALLY POLISHED... Terraria has probably totally spoiled me on Starbound, because its just so damn good. And it keeps being so damn good. The 1.2 patch this year rebalanced the entire game from start to end and added so much greatness. And then Halloween and Christmas events. Man I could have spent a good half year just playing Terraria.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown
Name all your soldiers after friends and family, give them all blue hair, and send them out to fight the alien hoards! Easily where I sunk most of my gaming hours this year. XCOM is a legit hard, unforgiving but not grossly unfair game, so when you win you feel like the king of the world. It takes itself so seriously, which is good, because you really gotta be serious to play it.

Link Between Worlds
I didn't mobile gaming much this year, so this is the only noteworthy one I played. 10/10 best Zelda. If you like Zelda and have a 3DS, you have no excuse. If you like Zelda and don't have a 3DS, honestly this may be the game that convinces you to go for it.

Still on the hit list: Dark Souls (Prpl and also everyone else saying its good guarantees it a spot), Left 4 Dead 2, Gnomria, Mass Effect



I ****ing HATE HOW SMALL THIS REPLY BOX IS. WHY THE HELL IS ONLY LIKE 1/5 MY SCREEN ABOUT REPLYING WHEN THIS WINDOW LITERALLY ONLY EXISTS TO REPLY TO MESSAGES. GODDAMN IT how did I spend so many years at this website when it was coded so badly?

[Archem]

Play Saints Row 2. Play it. Play it on a console (the PC version was reverse-engineered and re-coded to work because the porting team didn't have access to the source code, so it's unstable as all hell). You won't regret it. It's easily the best in the series. It's better than SR3 in nearly every way (you can't vault into cars, the game isn't quite as ridiculous, and it looks a little dated, but that's about it).

Also, hit the preview button when you go to type a reply. Bigger box (though not by much), not stretched to the ends of the Earth, and it has all your fancy little buttons for your bold font and emoticons.