Games of 2014

[Prpl_Mage]

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

2013
http://www.charas-project.net/forum/index.php?topic=28914.0

With 2014 coming to a close end here are the games I played and some thoughts about them.


Tomb Raider:
Okay, so first up is Tomb Raider, the new beginning of a classic tale. The game got a pretty dark tone and some focus on survival. They like to repeat that word over and over. You get weapons as the game progress, climb stuff, jump, solve some simple puzzles and find collectibles. Also, you can level up to earn new skills and find scraps to upgrade weapons. Also, since you have access to an island you end up backtracking a lot, which I love. Especially when you realize that you've missed some collectable in an area and you just unlocked some new fancy pancy gear. The battles are kinda typical 3rd person where you use cover or shoot people in the head to kill them, not enough mystical creatures to be honest. Or animals, could've used more animals. or a T-Rex, T-Rexes are nice. Overall it's a great game, them new developers could really be up to something if they keep this up.

Dragon Nest:
Another Korean MMO game, this one is in 3d like any WoW, with skill trees and limited items. Everything you could ever wish for. Like most of these games you pick a class and do a class quest to upgrade into one of the chosen branches of class to get access to even more skills. The game got lots of areas with dungeons. Quests for the dungeons and different difficulties for the dungeons. It's your typical korean mmo. The graphics are pretty nice and most of the translations are good. However, as it is free, there are a bunch of stuff that requires real money. Like making any kind of progress with crafting / reinforcing your gear. You find some interesting stuff from time to time though and there are times when you need a party of 4, which isn't that much fun when people are... people.

The Witcher:
Great game of the "dark satirical fantasy" type. It reminds me a lot of dragon age, like, what dragon age would be like with a less magical universe and a single character. Lots of similarities going on. Apparently this is based on a book as well, got the urge to read it. It took a while to get a hang of the battle system being kind of tricky, well not tricky byt unusual, but they did a good job with that. But to sum it up, you have your chapter, you have access to an area, you talk to NPCs, get side quests and quest chains. You find some women to shag on the way, make morality choices and you kill lots of monsters. Then when you've done everything you can - off to the next chapter. So basically, the game is great. Pretty sure that this was one of the first games with morality choices that actually affected the gameplay, well after fable. But fable was more black and white.They could've used some more variety among the enemies though. And more bosses. Otherwise, it's a mighty solid game that I'd recommend.

Code of princess:
Downloaded 3ds game, it's a beat 'em up and stuff like that. Got a bit dissapointed though. All the missions are to kill the monster in the area, there's no actual stage in the mission. Just this one place where you fight monsters. I would've prefered the typical "go right" angle where you move along a path and kill stuff on your way only to end up at a boss kind of monster. This was more like choosing what monsters you wanted to fight. The multiplayer is either PVE or PVP with PVE being to play missions, some non-story. The PVP is kinda unbalances though. You have like 50 characters in the pvp, being the story characters + 42 others. Being mostly npcs and monsters. The story mode itself allows the control of 4 different characters and the bonus mission 8. But still, was fun for a while. But it's just not as fun to just kill the stuff on screen.

Lightning Returns XIII:
I big step up from FFXIII-2. You can now move between areas, there is a day night thing going on and there is more customizations to your "paradigms"(now called schemata).
Remember Majoras Mask? How you only have 3 days to save the world and all that? Well this game have the same thing going on, but it's 13 days. Nay, it's actually just 7 days to begin with. Each time you clear one of the main quests, you earn a day, so that's good. Anyway, some people might be stressed out, especially considering all the sidequests in the game that easily eats up your days. Luckily, the sidequests appear each day (or past a certain day reached) so it's not like Majoras Mask there. In New game +, you have a better hang of things and can easily clear most main and side quests around day 6-7 if you use Chronostasis a lot(you stop time for a few minutes). Oh right, should probably mention that you don't level up, you only gain stats and stuff by completing sidequest and mainquests. These can be completed again in new game+ but for like 30% of the reward. So a quest that gave me 10+ magic now only gives me like 3+. Downside of the game is that you're alone, you can switch between your 3 schematas however, like previous games, but this time you add equipment and set skills to them on your own.
Also, the battle system is improved again, adding guard and stuff like that. All drains the ATB bar however, but it's better. Bad thing about the battle system is that you can position yourself to strike at enemies weakpoints and stuff. Problem is that you can only strafe real slow around the battle field and the enemies will turn to face you at all time. So there's no real point to things like "hit enemies in the back to deal additional damage". When they are staggered for example, it's more benificial to just slash away at them instead of moving slowly to the right. Oh yeah, and there's only like 40 enemies in the game and magneta coloured super versions of these monsters. But they scale for each day that passes so that's at least something.
Overall, the game destroyed Lightning in the same way recent Metroid destroyed Samus, taking her from overall cool "get the job done" character to a sex object. Most of the "garbs" in the game makes her show so much skin that it's just ridiculous. Like the Amazon warrior garb you get from doing main quests. It's basically a teeny plate bikini with stockings. And the worst part is that it got like the highest attack stat (almost). Story of the game? Meh, I liked it sure but I still agreed with the universe of FFXIII more. This time it's like "derp, world froze in time 500 years ago and all people have lived for 500 years, but haven't aged. Also the world is finally coming to an end now." And you need to save it. Kids around are 500 years old. That's creepy, especially when some act like grown ups and others like kids. The areas of the game? Meh^2, Remember how FFXIII-2 had the problem with the fact that you traveled through time but everything looked exactly the same even when you went 2000 years into the future and just reused the same areas over and over? This game consists of 4 ares. Two cities, Luxerion and Yusaan. 1 big grassy fields reminding of the FFX calm lands and a desert. Luckily, the main quest of the desert takes place in ruins underneath the desert. Still, kinda bland. It's a game about a world that has been in decline for 500 years, with chaos creeping closer and closer. Yet, there are no wierd fused biodomes or Outlands like floating islands. Just plains and deserts.
The game comes with difficulties as well, and that's a good thing. Because new game+(you carry over pretty much everything) got a bit easy when playing on normal again. Hard is hard though, and that's another good thing. And yeah, It's better than FXIII-2, but 10 years from now, I will probably pick up the original FFXIII rather than those two.

Hearthstone:
Blizzard's card game, yepp. That's a thing.
It's competative, it's based on random generation and it's destined to piss you off. What can I say? I'm not too well versed in card games like these. But basically a card got an hp stat and a damage stat, each time an attack is made between cards, they exchange blows. Some cards have passive abilities that boosts the hero or your other cards and stuff like that. There are different heroes, one for each world of warcraft class and they can get different cards. They also have one unique ability they can use each turn for their mana instead of playing cards if they want to. This is a terrible explanation. It's free, and on battlenet, so if you like card games. Go ahead and try it. But y'know, it pisses you off when you fight another player who throws in a light elemental that got the passive skill "your life is your attack power" and then uses a card to double the hp. The light elemental now have 20 damage and will attack you next turn, unfortunately, the enemy already have a card with taunt, so your own cards can't target the light elemental. And the card with taunt is so buff that you will only manage to fling 6 damage to that light elemental. Upon the enemy's next turn, he just heals the light elemental again and you say bye bye as the light elemtal shaggs 20 of your 25 hp away.

Trine 2:
Because of some discount campaign on Wii U, I got this one. Haven't played the original. The game looks terrific. Absolutely beautiful with the fairy tale setting and all that. Anyway, platformer puzzle solving game thingy. You have 3 characters: A wizard who can grab stuff with his magic and move them around (thanks to the touch screen or the analog stick) and can also conjure boxes. A knight with a shield that you can angle, also weapons to kill enemies. And a rogue with a hook shot and a bow. Superb, The levels of the game are kinda linear(as expected) but there are tons of "exp gems" and chess hidden throghout them. Most of them are hidden pretty well, other requires some tactical placement of boxes and others are almost impossible if you don't play coop. Coop works pretty much flawless, as long as the person with the gamepad controls the wizard most of the time, because of the touchy screen. Playing 3 players can get a it boring though, since one of you have to play the knight. And the knight is mostly good for solving the goblin issues, not puzzles. Also, by the end of the story you get another story, that might be exclusive to the wii u? Anyway, great fun, replayability lies in getting all them gems and chests.

A Link Between Worlds:
I love a classic Zelda, moving around in your world, camera panning between areas and link looking stupid swinging his sword at high speed. The game gives us pretty much all the classic enemies as well as some new additions and some neat items to use. However, this whole new "buy your items" system didn't really work for me. Not my style, I just ended up farming rupees to get all the stuff so that I wouldn't lose them if I'm dead. Also, all items uses the same energy bar. So using one item prevents the use of any other items as well. And also, bombs and the bow works in the same way. So you no longer have to find arrows and bombs. And I didn't like that either. Call me conservative or whatnot, but I just really looked forward to a more classic Zelda. Anyway, there are tons of minigames in the world and while you can get most items from the shop, some are still out there waiting to be found. The dungeons are kinda classic, however there was this thief hideout that surprised me having NPCs in it and stuff. Some of the bosses are great, having different stages that aren't just like the previous stages but faster. But then there are bosses that are just that, the more times you hit them, they just gets more red and move faster. There is a whole light/dark side thing going on (hardly a spoiler considering the name) and that's kinda neat. However, I feel like they could've done much more. Like Metroid prime 2.
Anyway, game was fun to play and all. But I once more feel like my intelect has outgrown the series at times, although these 2d Zeldas fare much better than the 3d ones.

Metal Gear Solid 3D:
Been having this laying around for some time now. It's the 3DS remake of MGS3 Snake eater, more or less. So what's new? Well, touch screen for starters and you can make your own camo with the camera. Word of advice, your face is not a pretty or useful camo. Still the game remains pretty much the same. Or at least there aren't any changes that I reacted to. You treck those woods and you save the world Snake style. Story ain't worth mentioning since it's the same as last time but still. Good job on the port, even the 3d looks good (but still gives me a headache).

Bayonetta:
Oh boy, this game. I don't know what to say about it to be honest. It's a great game, no questions about that, the battle system is smooth and the witch time is cool (although easily abused). Basically, enemies move in slow motion for some seconds if you do a percect dodge. The enemies aren't as stupid and worthless as usually is the rule in hack and slash games. They send hordes at you yes, but most of the time they also throw in one or two enemies you faced in the chapter before as a sub-boss kind of thing. Best part is when you face this dragon thingy boss, and the room after they let you fight another one, like no big deal. Anyway, lots of gore with finishing moves although in a kind of comical sense. Game is really challenging though, I like, especially the optional boss battle and the hard / infinite climax difficulties. Also, Bayoneta wears some silly outfit that dissappears when she uses certain moves making her almost naked(unless you equip an extra costume). But that's not really surprising considering how she's so over the top in every way. Dancing while killing hordes of monsters and delivering close ups on her butts as part of the cutscenes. Really, it's a special game. A special game that really... In some sense delivers what japanese pop culture promises - and Western players craves. And also a damn good hack and slash.

Warriors Orochi 3 Hyper:
Another Wii U title that I got for myself. Those of you familar with the Dynasty warriors or Samurai warriors know what this is. A game where you take the role as a captain and enter a battlefield and kill aproximately 1500 enemies each mission. Normal enemies are more or less meatwalls dying in 1-3 hits and their captains are comboing powerhouses that can easily kill your captain with a combo or 1-3 well placed hits. So there's some balance issues. Anyway, loads and loads of characters in this one. They can level up, get stronger weapons, fuse weapons to increase bonuses and you earn growth points that you can use to give experience to characters who weren't fighting. This is like the latest fire emblems. Anyway, the game is translated but all the voices are still in Japanese. Some of it might be Chinese as well? Not sure, I'm usually too busy cutting open 13 soldiers in one hit with some techno rock in the background to pay much attention to the voices. Anyway, story is basically this: A hydra appeared in this world consisting of different countries and eras combined. The hydra killed everyone, then a virtous maiden appears and offers 3 great warriors the chance to go back in time to save everyone who died. And then you go on missions of things that happened in the past to save the characters so that you can recruit them to fight the hydra again in the future. So yeah, time travel, change the past and change the future. Did I mention lots of characters? Also bonds between all these characters and some missions that only unlock when some characters bonds are increased.
Yeah. Dual mode (against other players or CPU) is really broken, some characters are far too strong for their own good. But the game offers a 2 player coop in the main story as well and that's a great thing. Especially since the game pad player can have his character on the gamepad while P2 gets the entire tv for himself. Thank god for no split screen. I think this just be the best thing about the Wii U.

Diablo 3 Reaper of souls:
So diablo 3 had some issues, people weren't happy with the auction house, how the loot rolled, how they somtimes got worthless stats on gear and that there wasn't enough legendaries in the game. So blizzard said "Okay, fine. This is what you want this time? So we'll change it once more." Them blizzars be some fine chaps.
Anyway, auction house is removed. Loot now rolls 99% with your main attribute (strength, dex, int) so it's actually useful for your character. I've noticed that this rule tends to shift though in multiplyer games with classes of other attributes. But whatever. You can now use the Mystic to reforge 1 stat/attribute of your equipment. Say that a sword drops and have "increased fire damage by 15%" and you only use cold skills, you can reroll that fire damage until you get cold skills( it's random though but can be repeated over and over, granted you have the materials and cash). Also, legendaries and stuff can drop pretty much anytime now. And scale to your character. Set items and legendaries both. So you can find a Thunderfury at lvl 35 and then again at lvl 70 with the lvl 70 having much better stats. Some legendaries can't drop below a certain level though, like the class sets (60 and 70) and so on. And that makes sense. So what's good? No more low level vs high level legendaries like before. Stuff can be useful if you find them again. So that's all fine and dandy. But then they changed the difficulty thing to something like Torchlight 2, and I just don't like that- but that's probably because I'm such a fan of diablo 2. Anyway, you choose your difficulty, and the difficulty decides how much gold and exp you gain, also the drop rates of legendaries. Also they patched the legendary rate up after the anniversery, people liked the game much more during that week when the droprates were doubled. Another problem is that you are probably lvl 70 already in act 3 on a new character. So yeah, great updates for a game that people said was dead. Although I would've loved to have seen a longer act 5. Act 5 in Diablo 2 was huge, this one is kinda. small.
By fall they released yet another content patch adding seasons where you could get some legendaries that aren't in the main game yet, legendary gems and also greater rifts. This is the basic idea. You do a normal rift with your rift key fragments, upon defeating the rift gurdian there's a chance that it drops a rift key of trials. You use the rift key of trials to enter an arena where your job is to kill as many waves as possible in time. For each wave you defeat the level of your future greater rift key is increases by 1(kinda). So clear up to wave 7 and get a lvl 7-ish greater rift key. The level of the rift key decides the strength of enemies, your drops but most importantly, how fast you need to be. See, greater rifts are timed to 15minutes, meaning that you need to fill your bar by killing elite packs and the rift guardian before the time runs out. Otherwise your rewards will be diminished and you won't get the option to upgrade your rift key to 1-3 levels higher. If you don't finish in time you can still upgrade a legendary gem. Which is an option if you complete it as well.

Heroes VI Shades of darkness:
A stand alone expansion for Heroes VI(2011) released a couple years later when Ubisoft ditched black hole and hired some new people. One new faction, Dungeon is available in the game now. Unlike the other two expansion that only gave you a new campaign and some unlockable Dynasty weapons.So that's always something. The new faction got some neat units and heroes and the campaign was a bit so and so. Got this to play with my brother but as with the original game, the lack of maps is a bit of a problem. You can only play so many games on each map before it gets dull. Still, we laid the AI to rest and fought each other in turn based strategy battles. Not much else to say really, if you liked Heroes VI and wasn't discouraged by their pushed release and laggy Uplay servers then this might be worth getting. Okay let's be nice to the game. The standalone Tribes of the East for Heroes V was a much better expansion since it added an alternative upgrade for each unit in the game as well as new neutral units and a faction. However, Heroes V had some serious balance issues and a stone age AI that would make you pickup a book while playing the game.

[Prpl_Mage]

Mario Kart 8:
From what I've heard, the sales of mario kart 7 were kinda low in the west. Probably because it was for the 3ds, which is a handheld. Anyway, the game is pretty much the same as that one. You can now drive underwater and glide through the air. But they added some F-zero characteristics like loops and tilting tracks, which is kinda fun. However, I fear that this means that there will be no new F-zero anytime soon. My biggest difficulty with this one is the lack of a map or the current placement of racers (unless you have it on the gamepad). It gets a bit confusing from time to time. Also, the roster kicked a bunch of characters that have been in it. Sure people might not miss diddy kong or boweser jr. but still. Also, the new characters are a bit "meh". Nevermind, content. Some changes have been made to the items, some items now have a bar that decreases after the first shot and  even more if you keep using it, like the fireball and gold mushroom. Fake item boxes are gone, so is the mega mushroom and such. Other than that, the online works really well and you can finally play gran prix with up to 4 players again. So great game to play with some friends over. Will do wonders when you want to take a break from smash. Two DLC packs were released for the game as well, each one contained new tracks and characters. A pretty good deal for what you got for your money, lots of companies could learn from Nintendo.


Final Fantasy X remake:
So the final fantasy remake finally appeared. Haven't been able to play this since my PS2 broke down horribly. Unlike the recent Tales of symphonia remake that I will never need since the Gamecube is as sturdy as the first gameboy (also gamecube games can be played at the wii when the gamecube eventually dies). The game is great and looks pretty swell in HD. However, the most apparent flaw with old games is the way the characters talk, It just doesn't look good, even in HD when noone fixes that. Some of the colour changes bugs me a little though, Yuna's hair looks black rather than brown /chestnut this time. But I guess that's just a part of the graphics. Game is still great and all, worth countless hours of my time with all the side stuff. But the dark aeons and whatnot aren't really a new edition to me since they were in the PAL version back in the days.
FFX-2 however seem even more silly in HD, the game's story is equivalent to a legless spider - no ability to support itself or get anywhere. The characters are... Not so very likable. Payne is more or less a pretty Kimahri, Rikku is annoying and Yuna's voice actor isn't doing a good job, or well it doesn't fit or something. The game's battle system is... okay? some things seem reduntant as you play it now. Like the ATB bars for example and some such. But it's nice to get additional jobs with this edition and more garment grids and such. Fun to play, yes. But I will most likely not play through it as many times as I did on the ps2 way back with extra playthroughs.

Tales of Grace:
Another tales game, another world to explore and a new system to experience. This time, well. Battles are insane. Sure you had more mobility in Xillia than Symphonia but this **** be crazy. All attacks are useful. It's not the previous "use really really slow attacks or cool skills" Even the normal attack combos eventually leads to a cool attack. Speaking of combos, lots of skills can be used in a combo. Also, no TP(MP) cost. So battles are an all out mashing service to do the coolest skills available and overwhelm your enemies before they get the chance to do the same to you. How do you learn skills? You equip a title and earn points in combat that levels it. If a title has a tiger blade bonus, that means that you will learn tiger blade if you don't already have it, and if you have it - you'll get increased damage on tiger blade or something. So missing a title isn't all bad, but you'll miss out on some bonuses. The story is kinda what you expect of a tales game although this one is a bit more political in a sense than others. Although we kinda drift into the protagonist centred story later as well. There's also some extra content called the "after days" or some such that I didn't try. But it's apparently some additional hours of gameplay after the main storylines end. Great game if you like the tales series and what they have accomplished with it. But it might make the other games like Xillia seem sluggish in comparison.

Playstation All-star Battle Royal:
Sony failed this game even with the title. But let's be kind to it. You know Super Smash Brawl? Yeah, picture that game but the only way to kill your enemies is by using the Smash ball attack. That's pretty much PASBR. You have a bunch of generic characters from different PS3 titles that fight with different moves. Each attack generates star power to your bar that can fill up to 3 times. Each of the 3 levels is a different attack that will instantly kill the opponent. But this is also the only way to kill them. So you kinda fight it out and then the character with the cheapest Special attack wins. Pretty much. The game is kinda cluttered and lots of characters have pretty much the same animation for attacks (unsurprising when 50% of the cast is shooting at each other with guns). Let's talk about the cast a little. We have some noticable characters like Kratos from god of war, Heihachi from Tekken, Raiden from Metal Gear, Sackboy from Little big planet and stuff like Jack and dexter,ratchet and clank or Big Daddy from bioshock. Then we have the cast of generic male guy such as Nathan drake, Cole, Evil Cole and Dante (generic in the sense that they just look like people). Next up is the less memorable characters like Sweet tooth, fat princess, parappa the rapper, toro, Spike, General razec and sir daniel, hell might as well throw in sly cooper here as well. Personal opinion? Very yes, maybe I didn't play enough games on the playstation console but the games I did play I felt were Iconic aren't represented. Spyro the dragon, Crash Bandicoot, Resident evil, Tomb raider and well classic dante. New dante in this game just melts in with nathan and the Coles. And well, Final Fantasy would be nice. That was the only reason I got a playstaion in the first place. But I get why Square didn't want to be on this trainwreck. Anyway, 4 DLC characters are available($5 each or something) these are Zeus from god of war, Kat from gravity rush, Isaac from dead space and Emmet graves from starhawk. Yeah, not really the cast you hoped for. Truth is, if you want to play a game with all your favorite characters you're better off getting a Capcom VS namco or Project X Zone. Still, this game works as some sort of rebound until new Smash is released.


7 days to die:
Well, this game is like how people explain minecraft to me. But there are zombies pretty much everywhere. And in the dark (aka night) they will move and attack faster. Anyway, you start out in a world, that looks pretty much the same everytime. At least the map. But there's also the option to play in a random generated world. These are large and more varied but kinda feels empty because of the lack of cities and stuff that are easily found in the prerendered map. Then you start pillaging the leftovers of the apocalypse until you realize that the stuff you actually need to survive the night is typical minecraft/terraria resources. So you need wood to make bricks, or cobblestone, but not normal stone. Then you're gonna need something to hit enemies with, this is most easily done with a wooden club(you only need sticks to repair it) and next up is to make a fireplace to cook some food and stuff (for that you need stones). Speaking of food, you have a stamina bar, a health bar, a food bar and a thirst bar. If the food or thirst bar gets to low, you start losing health. Stamina decides for how long you can run and attack. The lower the bar, the weaker the attacks. So that's a pretty neat system. Also, all tools and weapons have durability that needs to be tended to or the items dissappears. Anyway, the game has some crafting flaws in it. For example, to mine effectively you need a pickaxe, but to make a pickaxe you need iron. And where do you get iron? Yes, from punching rocks to death or mining. So yeah, that's kind of annoying, no big deal. (Clarification, you can also collect items of iron type and turn it into crap iron and then melt it). Also, you need to unlock recipes to make certain stuff like bullets. And that can get a bit annoying. Best part of the game? You can change tons of options for how the game will play out, anything from zombie density to how often airdrops will occur. However, the worst part of the game is that... Well, I haven't found a way to win yet. I have my world and I scavage away during the day. Looting buildings and rubbles. There aren't any bosses as far as I can tell, no objectives and survive for 7 days wasn't the goal as I thought it would be. I'm on day 14 now and well, there's more or less no difference between now and day 1. Zombies are getting stronger I guess, and the hoards are slightly larger and frame drop inducing. Donno. But it's early access so who knows?


Pixel Piracy:
Remember FTL? Of course you do, it had a remastered edition released this spring. Well this is pretty much the same I guess. Only that you build your own ship. Well, you would if you had the cash to. Also you have a crew like in FTL, well, unless they decide to turn on you for not paying their salery, or that you didn't bring enough food for 3 people, or that they fall into the water during sailing. Or that anything happened. Goddamn my crew dies all the time. I'm surprised that the people in the tavern haven't suspected me of being some sort of psycho killer yet. Anyway, you get experience and your characters level, up, you increase their stats and you equip them with items. This is all great. It would also have been great if the gmae told me that all the bananas I picked up from treasure chests counted as some sort of off-hand equipment. Just imagine all the pirates I lost during long journies because I ran out of melons in my ship-barrel? The world is randomly generated and consits of a grid. It takes time to travel between the different areas and they mostly holds an island or a city to explore. But these places are usually really small. On the bright side, you usually don't have to deal with all the assholery that FTL does. "Oh noes, you warped in too close to a star so you're ship is now on fire and there is a rebel drone that warps some bots on your ship. GLHF".
Anyway, game is till in beta so I hope this gets even more awesome.


Mirrors Edge:
So this game is like, parkour on top of skyscrapers pretty much. The graphics are neat and the way they cut of the white/gray areas with strong colours like red, blue and orange works surprisingly well. Unfortunately the cutscenes are done in 2d that reminds me of the crap in Torchlight 2(which in tune reminds me of flash games). Kinda cartoony, not bad, but would look better if executed differently. Anyway, you jump around, finding different paths to progress the game, there are some police officers to stop (see: shoot) you since jumping around on buildings is illegal. I find it kinda refreshing that you can't hoard weapons, you don't even own a weapon. All the parkour stuff can't be done when you're holding a weapon, and for some reason the heroinne of this game does not have a black hole of an inventory to put it in, so she either holds it, or throws it away. Sounds annoying? I guess it might, so you have to disarm the enemies or counter them if you want to survive. And since you stel the weapon from the enemies, you don't even have ammo besides what's in the weapon. As I mentioned, felt refreshing. Game follows a story, and missions as you progress the story. The story is written by everyone's favorite writer Rhianna Pratchett. However, it is not the typical satire like her Overlord masterpiece. The ending kinda leaves you hanging though. The worst part of the game? Well, I would say that it's missing something. A simple thing such as a game result once the game is over (seriously, why don't developers do this anymore?) would've done wonders. Just something to show how much time you spent on a chapter, how many times you died and how many people you ended up killing. Also, it would've been nice to have some stealth elements in the game, sure it's about running so you mostly run away but still. I guess what I'm saying is that this game could've borrowed some from metal gear and I would've loved it enough to play it again sometime. Also, had to turn of some physics thing that would make the game be dropping frames whenever you or an enemy shot a window.

Torchlight 2 Revisited:
Remember how I gave a very short review of Torchlight 2 last year? Yeah well now I finally played through the entire thing. Summery: Not better than Diablo 3 in any way.
Great start huh? Anyway, convinced my brother to get this so we set out, with Elite as our difficulty. I went with a berserker class and he with an outlander. Guess who died the most? That's right, me. I know it's elite but the game got some flaws here. Most enemies would instantly kill me with a melee attack the milisecond I got close to them, and this was even though I spend 3 out of 5 points into vitality til lvl 40 or so (that's when I realised that it was pointless). I also tried to keep my resistances on par with my pet, and this didn't help either. I had around 650 fire resistance and 450 physical resistance by the final dungeon where every enemy is labeled as "fire" and a cindermage would still kill me in a single hit. Sure I got my skills and my potions but enemies simply deal too much damage without any way to avoid the attacks. Also, the damage over time fields that some enemies drop. Like throwing a molotov that explodes into a fiery field. It seems like the programmers forgot to add a timer of some sort between the damage intervals. Because you touch that and you lose all 3000hp in a second. Homing bolts, hurlers,charging enemies, those stupid marksmen and shock choppers in the desert. And don't get me started on all the bosses. No wait, I'll get started with the bosses. Whoever thought it was a good idea to bring back the brickwalling of diablo 2? Run into the boss, get in 1-2 hits, die, repeat. And who thought it was a good idea to make pretty much all bosses also continously spawn enemies that are also able to kill you in 1 hit? I'm looking at you manticore! Stupid choices aside, the game is laggy and buggy when playing online. Half the time I tried to teleport from the city to my brother usually ended up in one of us getting disconnected. Upon which we would lose X minutes of play. Such as when we finally reconencted we jumped back like half a level and that cool axe I found was suddenly missing. What's the point of having a game connected to the internet all the time if it doesn't save your character? Anyway, knockback is also a problem since both you and enmemies can be pushed through objects and walls, or well, up or down in elevation. And everytime you die you lose 10% of your gold, and you can't deposit it anywhere.So by the time you reach a boss, you're down to 1% gold once you finally beat it (because of ther aformentioned brickwalling). Get's pretty frustrating. And now someone will say "you can revive in town to not lose money" and yes, you can. But then you need to teleport to the area before the boss area (because you can't place teleports or teleport to a party memeber in the boss area). And the loading time to that area will take a couple of minutes, and then you need another loading screen to get into the boss area once more. And during that whole time your brother will shout profanity at you for being a "slow *** bitch". Game couldn't take advantage of all the fancy stuff in my computer for some reason. So the loading speed was and always would be the loading speed. Terrible. Oh yeah, for some reason. Enemies would teleport around on the screen at times, and projectiles lack their assigned lightning effect. This would result in a couple of annoying deaths... Also, you couldn't place your skill points as you wanted, 'cuz you hit a level requirement pretty soon. And most of the time you wasted your skill points because skills doesn't have synenergies like in Diablo 2, and you may only reset the last 3 skill points you placed. So that one skill you leveled at the start of the game still sits there being useless. And the pet choices that I thought was a good idea proved to be useless since the only way they actually contribute to the battle is if you feed them with fish that also changes the appearance. So no Alpackas on the screen. Ever.

Aura Kingdom:
Another korean anime looking MMO game, not sure if it's Korean though. You pick your class (based on weapon) and a starting eidolon (there are like 4 to choose from but another 20-30 to unlock in the game or through the real money shop) and do some typical quests in a typical open world like WoW. Kill 20 tanukis, collect 8 grass seeds. Talk to this person. At lvl 10 you can create and join guilds. At lvl 25 you can do your 5 daily fame quests. At lvl 30 you may enter the temple of eidolons to fight a random eidolon and have chance of winning the item that unlokcs it for your account. On lvl 40-ish you can unlock a secondary weapon (aka subclass) for your character and the arena. On lvl 45 you unlock the battleground. On lvl 50 you unlock the daily fightclub. And so on. And everyday you can do the dungeons for a daily reward and the Netherrealm rifts (protect the crystal!). So yeah, contents. Anyway, played with a friend, started a guild. Started doing things to earn Guild exp to unlock more bonuses and stuff like a Guild manor, a logo of our choice to accompany our guild name and so on. We also grinded dungeons for loot and suffered defeats at the feet of a huge bunny. It was like Monty Pythons' holy grail over and over again. We also raced to see who could get a new eidolon first and then made fun of each other because of the eidolons we picked. Anyway, the game is some sort of action based mmorpg. You click on an enemy to make it a target and then you mash your skill buttons to kill it. You don't have mana, only cooldowns. Each class also got some sort of gimmick. An archer can hold down the skill button for a set time to increase the damage the skill does(worthless when you can spam skills). A brawler can use skills to earn Sky/earth charges that can either be converted to a crit / evasion buff or used in a finisher skill to deal more damage. A ravager got a rage bar that increases for each ravager skill you use that increases the damage you do. Stuff like that kept it fresh. Also, gear and costumes are two different things. Equipping a new armour doesn't change your appearance, only costumes fo that. Great fun if you're into stuff like that. During my 187 hours of playtime I managed to unlock 2 extra character slots, gain 3 eidolons and push my guild to lvl 4. My highest character was 58 and the rest were 50ish.

Risk of rain:
So this is one of those arcadish platform games where you do as much as you can before you die and then unlock stuff for future playthroughs based on what you did. Best explanation right? Nah but you pick your character first (you only start with one) then you start looking for a teleport device to leave the current random area. In the area, monsters spawn, and the longer you stay in one area, the stronger the monsters become. But it's all good because you get cash, and cash can be used to open treasure chests for items or unlock a given item in a capsule. These items are rad and boosts your character with things like "attacks might burn enemies" "recover health when you do ****" or "enemies attacking you take damage" lots of things that makes you kill stuff better. And some of these also stack, so finding more boosts you even further. Then you find your teleporter and activates it, spawning a big baddie boss to kill or survive until the timer expires. Most likely you'll die here and then you'll get your score and unlock some new items or characters if you did good. Pretty fun, but most likely more fun in coop.

Edge of space:
Not much can be said about Edge of Space when I played it. It was, special in a bad way. Graphics and the idea behind it is cool. Jet packs, planets, laser drill instead of a pickaxe. But then things kinda fall apart, mostly because the game don't tell you what to do but also since the game is in early access so most guides you find on the wiki are dated. So buildings need power, so you need to connect them to a generator, but the generator could only be placed in an area with energy signals, then you need an energy scanner to find an area with energy signals so you know where to place your generator. Next up is a cool thing, statement switches. Like "if X but not Y", "If X and Y", If X or Y" switches like that could be assigned to devices. Battle was a bit of a drag since you only have guns and most enemies (at least where you start) tend to charge you and then nibble on your feet. Anyway, you mine stuff and find some uranium, you increase your stats by finding caches(chests) or killing monsters to unlock new recipes. I feel that this game got a lot of potentional, but right now it needs more work.

Starbound:
An early access game still in early access. You guys talked about it for a long time and it appeared on the humble bundle or something so I got it. It's pretty neat. Terraria in space to some degree. Difference is that you travel different planets, and unlock so you can travel to distant planets. You also have a ship where you can place stuff to store your ****. Or most of it at least. Also NPCs, although I didn't find a lot of them. Basic idea is the same. Go to planet, mine the current texture of ground until you find something worth digging, also remember to bring a campfire since it's cold underground and you kinda need to stay warm to be alive. Enemies you encounter are a mash up between 3 different body parts or something that decides its pattern and abilities. Still, you collect stuff you craft an armour, you buy really really expensive health potions, you get some neat weapon and then you summon some penguin UFO to earn one of the parts necessary to travel further into the galaxy. It was fun, it was something I had done before in a sense. Felt like I'd give it some more time before I delve deeper into it.

Hyperdimension Neptunia:
This is a pretty cool game that has a story based on the "console wars". Each console(here countries called, Lastation, Leanbox, Lowee and Planeptune) have a goddess in the goddess realm that are fighting each other. But alas, the sega CPU has been cast down from heaven and lost her memory in true rpg feeling. This game is making fun of most cliches and is therefore kinda fun to play. However, it's a bit too much "anime" for my taste at times with over the top quirkyness and a relentless talk about boobs and sexual innuendo. Still, interesting battle system that kinda evolved a typical turn based system where you enter your commands and string together combo chains. Game is kinda long, not sure how long I don't think the game kept track of that... Still spent several hours on it, also lots of DLC dungeons, most of them are free to get. Although the recommended level says "600" or "900" for some of the DLC dungeons I could beat most of them around 75ish. Also there's a whole bunch of dlc content for the game, the mandatory beachwear costumes, level cap increasers, stat boosters, accessories, weapons and 4 playable characters. 2 of those downloaded characters still appear in the game and will join your party as guests, meaning that they are there but don't help out in battles. One of them also passively decreases sjop costs while the other one lets you see the distribution of shares. What are shares? Well I wish the game told me that earlier. Basically, shares are divided among 5 factions: the four consoles and an "other". The other is basically all the shares that you have lost, forever and ever. This happens when one of the console characters are dead by the end of a battle or you wipe against an enemy and chooses "try again", also if you enter a dungeon and leaves without finishing the quest. How do you earn shares? You don't, by completing a quest in Lastation for example you take some shares from the other 3 console shares and adds to Lastation basically. So yeah, by the time I got the character that could show me shares I had already lost some. No big deal but made things a bit slower. In the "right before the final battle" section of the game you can unlock some things by raising each consoles shares to a certain percentage(like 30-40%) and doing some stuff. Oh yeah, there are no real cutscenes or movies in the game. Most of that stuff is done in a Fire emblem manner where a character appears on each side of the screen, talks (with voice overs for the story related stuff) and changes portraits to convey feelings. The final final boss is pretty hard but the game is kinda awesome otherwise.

Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2:
The sequel to the abovementioned game, there are some clear visual updates and the game runs a lot smoother. Also, no random encounters, the enemies appear in the dungeons and you can initiate battle or become the victim of back attacks. This time you can also move around the battlefield and position yourself. Unfortunately this means that even your squishy healer has to be in the frontlines to deal damage. Anyway, lots of the old characters are back from the previous game, the world has also changed with a more scifi look to it and a world map like a real rpg. The protagonist of the last game is missing though, instead we get to deal with her very pink little sister who is a wuzz while Neptune was an energy pack who spoke her mind. Items are also used differently in this one. In the last game you assigned items as a passive skill with a chance to activate, the chance to activated was decided by how manay points you put into it and the condition for activation depended on the skill. For example, a 50% heal would only activate if the character was below 30%hp and was attacked. Now, items are used like in ordinary RPGs in battle or outside battle by characters on their turn. Extra information about the world, the characters and stuff can be found by visiting the chirper grid. I'm guessing this is a take on twitter? Lots of short messages from characters of varying unimportance. Also, the enemies in this one are made to actually resemble the games they are making fun of most of the time. I fought a cactuar knock of that was a turnip. A kupocat (copycat meets kupo), some pirayahplants and so on. It adds a good feel to it where the last game just had generic rpg enemies like dragons, ghosts, bats, mushrooms. 
The Incredible 101:
How do you notice how a game have been made by Platinum Games? No? Well the answer is that the boss battles are always ****ing epic. Okay let's just vent this a little. Incredible 101 kinda looks like it is a game version of Team America, especially the general reminds me too much of those dolls. Team America was a fun movie though, don't get me wrong. Anway, you do not control 1 character or have a third person perspective. Nope sir, you control a captain with a caterpillar system of 10-100 other characters in tow. And the camera is kinda stuck in it's overview perspective over the city/ whatever you are currently trecking. This is refreshing, and you can kinda easily gather all of yours to the same place so they don't trail behind. However, some of the hectic battles gets kinda troubling when you get smacked and all your heroes gets knocked away so you have to gather them again. I never played Pikmin but someone said that this is like pikmin but a hack and slash. Anyway, the game features a shop where you can buy upgrades and new moves. For example there's the counter jelly that you can use with some timing to stun enemies for some seconds, or why not invest in being able to turn into a ball to roll around the battlefield. Anyway, the game is sweet and you swap between your different abilities by drawing on the gamepad. Kinda simple things at first though, a straight line is sword and a circle is fist while a triangle is flight. Anway, platinum games knows how to make boss battles. Problem with the zelda games whenever you replay them is that you pretty much repeat the same process 3 or 5 times and then the boss is dead. Like Dodongo in Ocarina of time or any other boss in Ocarina of time to be honest. I reacted to this in Bayonetta and Metal gear Reveancence as well where they seem to put in a lot of effort into the boss battles. It's usually not enough to just hack and slash them (like was the case for most devil may cry bossess). Nope, they change form or you have to input some action commands and then then you enter a new stage of the fight "oh **** a skyscraper is flying right at you" and so on. Loved it, and that kind of creativity is present in this game as well. However, there are times when the game wants you to do something and you have no idea what they expect you to do. But then again, I'm gonna see this as a possitive thing, that the game isn't predictable (and that there's a checkpoint pretty much the moment before this thing incase you fail and die).

WoW Mist of pandaria and Warlords of Draenor:
Okay so yeah, been like 3 years since I last played WoW, I skipped the whole pandaria expansion. Never liked the idea of making an entire continent loosely based on Asian(Chinese) mythology and throw in some terrible voice actors with the job to sound like Mr.Miyagi. Anyway, all expansions but the latest is now included with the game. So I didn't have to buy pandaria to play draenor. And that's pretty much how my brother convinced me to play with him for a month or so. So what is there to say? The game looks, pretty much the same. it's kinda amazing how they revamp a bunch of character models (thank god) but leave the font and interface the same. I guess they realize that most people use some addons for stuff like the UI and raid assists and so on. Game feels just like home, or well it would if they hadn't changed a bunch of things since last. Pandaria revamped the talent trees and while something had to be done I'm not super happy with the results. Previous system worked pretty much like this: You level up, you can buy new skills from your class trainer and then you spend talent points in three different trees with emphasis on different aspects of your character role. A Shaman had a restoration tree for healing, an elemental tree for magic damage and an enhancement tree for melee damage. You usually pour all your skill points into one tree to progress down to more powerful stuff like activated abilities and boosts to the abilities you like to use in your rotation. And then you have some leftover points that you spend on the other trees and reach some neat extra bonuses. New system is kinda like this: You level up, then you get to choose a specialization, same as before, resto, elem, enhanc. But there is no talent trees, instead you choose one of 3 talents per rank every 15 levels. First one is lvl 15 , second lvl 30 and so on. You get the gist of it. Also, some(some) talents are different depending on your spec. So what happened to all the old cool stuff that you used to have on the talent trees? Well, they are now earned when you level up like the normal skills. And you don't have to buy them! However, what skills you have access to greatly depend on your spec. As a demonology warlock I used to send in my demons while I cast corruption, curse of agony and immolation on all targets before me and watch the DoT damage slowly kill them without getting too much aggro. But now I don't even have access to immolation or curse of agony since they belong to a different spec. I get the idea that you want to clean up the interface. I had to use an addon to manage all my spells and totems as a shaman before, now I don't even have 1/3 of them to worry about.
Anyway, Monk class is a bit so and so, pandarens are decent as a race, at least their animations are fresh and they don't look anorectic like some of the other races.
Draenor was released and then the servers crashed, lots and lots of people flushed back into the game and someone did a ddos attack on the servers. But the new Draenor continent is pretty sweet. But a fly-free zone so that sucks. Irony perhaps? Burning crusade was the first expansion to let players fly. And Draenor is the first in ages that prevents players from flying. Instead of only being guided by generic kill 15 orcs quests you know have chapters and a storyline. Although the storyline usually involves the "kill 15 orcs". still, you don't have to return to a questgiver hub after each task, instead the world changes and that NPC has moved ahead to where you need to go. Feels a lot better that way. Also "bonus objectives" that are pretty much "oh you're in this area, well kill a bunch of stuff and a strong monster and we'll give you some exp and gold". I guess the fanciest feature is the garrison. It's kind of a neat feature after all. You have followers (goons) that comes with different traits (counters) and you send them out on missions that will give your character some gold, items or exp. Your goons can also level up and earn new counters. For example, a goon might have taunt. This means that he will counter a strong enemy in missions. Luckily, the game tells you the success percentage of the mission you are about to send your goons. And if your goon's level is up to par and you have the right counter = 100% success. Then after sending them you have to wait like a facebook game for them to return so that you can check the results and get the reward. Your garrison also comes with a mine and a garden for all your profession needs. And you can build profession buildings to make your life easier. As in pandaria, most items are made with special "once a day"-crafted items. However, with a proffesion building you can jusr hand in some resources and they will produce some of those for you over the course of the day. Time improves if you place a goon in the building. You garriosn might also get invaded once in a while and you can invite some buddies over to help you with that. This mission/scenario thing reminda me too much of the Mount Hyjal raid where you stand around trying to defend the NCPs from waves of enemeies. What else, group finder tool is actually working as intended these days. Lots of dungeons are locked unless your gear is strong enough. Unfortunately this doesn't exclude people from sucking at the three roles. You know that a DPS is terrible when your tank has a higher damage output during every battle. Also, for the heroics you are needed to clear some sort of "derp trial" where as a dps you are required to defeat 5 waves of monsters, as a healer you have to keep a group alive during 5 waves of monsters and as a tank you kinda have to survive 5 waves against monsters.

Smash bros Wii u:
Awaited for so long and the thing nintendo needed to publish. The rooster has been upped more than before and the random tripping is gone. But as a friend of mine said "who the heck are these guys?" For starters, duck hunt duo, dark pit and villager are characters that most people don't know. Or don't care about really. Also, why did they add dark pit and give him the exact same moves as pit? Wouldn't it make more sense to make pit the same as brawl pit and then make dark pit this new improved one? Except some minor adjustments to the moves and the animations (and victory theme) they are the same. Lots of the characters are unlocked when buying the game, I think you just have to unlock the doppelganger quartet of falco, dr mario, lucina and dark pit as well as the old school trio of rob, game and watch and duck hunt. Oh yeah, wario as well. Then there are like 3-4 stages to unlock. Speaking of stages, the new stage builder is great. Although it took me like 2 days to figure out how the ledges worked it's great. Being able to place nicely symmetrical cubes would be nice but still. Classic mode is a bit tournament like with the final boss depending on your difficulty. On the highest you get like 4 bosses in a row. Gets a bit intense I suppose. Game modes, smash tour, trophy rush, target smash, homerun contest and the multiman smash. I still miss stuff like board the platform or the break the targets challenges. You can also make three versions of mii fighters. Add the head of a mii from your console, decide the clothes and a hat, pick the three special moves they should have and watch them go. I think a hint showed up that said that the mii fighters are affected by the size in the mii maker. I haven't noticed much of that though.

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[Prpl_Mage]

Board games:

Smash up:
A really well done game with balance and replayability and lots of hours of fun with your friends. Unlike some games like munchkin, you won't spend an eternity playing a round of this. Simplified explanation is to follow: First person to get 15 victory points win. Victory points are earned by capturing bases(there are [ammount of players+1] bases on the table at a time). Each base has a different reward for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place. so the winner might get 5 VP, the runner up 3VP and the 3rd  gets like 1VP or such. How do you win a base? Well you have two types of cards, Minions and Actions. Minions have a power value and actions are there to either boost your cards, mess up for your friends or do something entirely different. Each base has a power value that needs to be reached for it to break and everyone gets their reward. However, if i place a Minion of power 8 and someone removes it from the base, those 8 points have not been removed from the base already. It is when the total sum of the base is equal to or higher than the base's breaking point. This makes for a surprisingly strategic gameplay especially since there are a number of factions(decks) to play with. And here's the best part. Each player picks 2 factions to make their deck, not just one. So you can have a ninja faction and a dinosaur faction in your deck for example. Each team has some unique minions and actions like how a ninja player can place a Shinobi in a base that breaks to increase his power there when you decide the winner of the base. Likewise there is a leprecheon faction that can prevent a player from placing any minions on a certain base, a DNA faction that can copy the power of an enemy card and so on. Great fun.

King of Tokyo:
If you don't like to rely on a dice, don't play this. It's pretty much yaatzy in a sense. You pick a monster, you have a health value. You roll your dice at the start of your turn with two rerolls and then figure out what you got. Basically, you need 20 VP to win, if you get three or more 1 on the die, you get 1 point(+ additional 1 after 3), getting four 3s would grant you 4 points (3+1) and five 2s is 4 points as well (2+2). You can also enter Tokyo if you got an attack symbol, by doing so you earn 1VP and 1 for each turn you start there. Here's the problem though. The person inside Tokyo can be attacked by everyone outside it, luckily, any attack the person inside makes will damage everyone else as well. Each dice with an attack symbol represents 1 point of damage, so getting 5 attack symbols on your dice means 5 damage, simple. There's also an energy symbol on the dice, energy is used to buy ability cards and use certain ability cards. These cards are really varied from a one time heal, to a nuke that damages everyone(including yourself) 5 points of damage but gives you 3VP. And the last dice symbol is a heart, representing healing. So if you take damage you can roll to heal yourself. With one of the expansion you will also get an "evolution card" if you manage to get 3 hearts if you are willing to give up the healing. These are either "mess with your friend abilities" or passive bonuses. A fun game nevertheless, until you get tired of your lack of dice luck.

Legendary:
A very weird game in a sense. This is a Marvel game and you have a bunch of heroes from the avengers, x men, spider man and deadpool. Spider man is the only spiderman hero and deadpool is the only deadpool hero. Anyway, you also have villains based on Marvel as well. And each game the goal is different(there are like 15 different game rules (schemes) that decides the setup of the game and such. It's kinda hard to explain this one without the visual aid of the play field and such. But basically, cards can have an attack value or a credit value(some have both), you draw your hand of 6 cards and look what you got. If your credit value is equal to or higher than the buy cost of a hero card - you can buy it and add to your deck. If your attack value is equal to or higher than a villain on the field, you can attack it and get the reward. You play together with your friend to survive the scheme and defeat the mastermind but at the same time its' the player who defeats the most villains or rescues the most bystanders who eventually wins. Sucky explanation I know. It's pretty fun thanks to the different schemes that mix things up.

Boss Monster:
Interesting concept, you are a boss and you should build a dungeon to lure and kill hereos. You draw a random Boss from the boss pile and some random room cards. Room cards are either Minion rooms or trap rooms. There are 4 different types of symbols in the game, A sword representing warriors, a cross for priests, a purse for thieves and a book for mages. Basically, the warrior heroes drawn at the start of the turn will enter the dungeon with the most warrior loot. Each room has one of these symbols(or more) and the boss card also has a symbol. So if you have a total of 3 sword symbols and your friend have 4, the warrior hero will enter his dungeon instead of yours. Killing heroes grants you victory points, so you want them to enter. But you don't want too many to enter since that would risk your own life. It's a fun game but you kinda rely on luck to get useful room cards or that one guy might just lure 3/4 of all the heroes and win. There's also spells you can use to help yourself or mess with others. I guess my main problem with this game is the lack of interaction with the other players, more mess up cards would be nice. Or like, stealing other people's minion rooms or something.

Mage Knight:
Keep in mind that this whole Board Game thingy is kinda new to me, so pardon the lack of correct termology. Make knight is an interesting game anyhow, but it takes forever to play. You have hexadomental tiles to represent areas, you can explore new ones by walking to the edge of the current area. When an rea is revealed you place the right type of enemies on it and other treasures and such. Well, how am I going to explain this then... You pick a hero, each hero has its own deck with unqiue hero abilities and some shared ones. There are also crystals of 6 colours that can be used to enchant a card upon usage so you get an additional effect. For example, something that would increase your movement by 1 would improve it by 2 if you also use a white crystal. So you kinda need crystals as well. There is some PVP involved if you want to allow it, however, the rules for the pvp was messy and in the end we just invented our own. When you attack an enemy, you use your attack value first, if the value isn't enough to kill it right away then you need to take a counter attack from the enemy. This counter attack can be blocked if your block value is high enough. If it isn't you take damage. Kinda straigth forward. You can also start a combat by shooting at them from afar. Stuff like that. Anyway, some time into the game you kinda run out of places to place your tiles, you run out of enemies to kill so you can level up and you are starting to get really hungry. So it's kinda time consuming, but fun. But y'knwo, invent your own pvp rules, we ended up playing a classic SEGA NHL 94 or something instead of combat and the loser would take damage.

Betrayal at house on the hill:
A pretty interesting concept, everyone starts of as an explorer of their choice you explore the house by placing tiles. The house has 3 levels. Ground, upper floor and basement. You can move freely between the upper floor and the ground floor but to get up from the basement you need to find a room tile with a staircase. Some rooms have an event symbol in them, some have an item symbol and some have the devious omen symbol. Event rooms basically means, draw an event card and get ready to roll your dice to avoid getting stat reductions. Oh right, maybe I should mention that. The dices have 2 blank sides, 2 sides with 1 and 2 sides with 2. Also, each character have different stats, for example "the flash" start with 5 speed(meaning 5 steps) buf if reduced, it becomes 4, reduce it again and it' still 4, and again still 4, increase it and it will become 6, then 6 and then 7. If a stat value is reduced beyond your lowest value, you die. Simple as that. Stats are divided into 2 catagories: Physical(speed, might) and mental(knowledge, sanity). So if you take 3 points of mental damage you can spread it out between sanity and knowledge as much as you want. Right, basically, a lot of event will reduce a certain stat or increase them(if you can roll dat dice). Next up is item rooms, as the name suggests, an item is an item and can either have a passive gain (2+ sanity) or something otherwise useful (restore any stat to it's starting value). Lastly are the omen cards, there are only like 10 of them I think and each time someone draws an omen card you increase a counter by 1, then the person who drew the card needs to roll 6 dice and get more than the counter or phase two of the game will happen(this is called a haunt, you would think it would be called a betrayal). So if people have drawn a total of 8 omen cards then the player who just drew one needs to roll 8 or higher. Otherwise the haunt begins. When a haunt begins, the player who failed the haunt takes up a chart and looks what the haunt is. There are like 75 different haunts in the game. So he checks what omen card he drew and what room it was, finds a number and checks the number for who the betrayer is. Most often it's something related to omen cards, or simply "the person to your left". Next up, the traitor leaves the room with his book with the information he needs and the remaining explorers(now survivors) read their own version of instructions. For example, during a bomb haunt the traitor was stuck in the same room he was in and everyone else had a time bomb strapped to them. To win the survivors had to diffuse the bombs or defeat the bomb man. However, they didn't know that getting to a room adjacent to the bombman would set the bomb off. Likewise, the bombman didn't know how the survivors could diffuse their bombs, just had to roll his dice and hope for an early explosion. So it's a pretty fine game, lots of different scenarios that can occur. Also, secret traitors where everyone gets the same instructions but based on a draw of chips, one of them is the traitor.


Also, I'll be in London for 5 days or so starting tomorrow so have great week everyone!

[Archem]

Not that I intend to review any of the games I've played this year, but here's a list of games that I beat, and what month they were beaten in.

February

Max Payne 3 (Finally finished the trilogy!)
Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D (still haven't 100% it, but it's just mirrored levels, so close enough)

March

Jak & Daxter, 100% (shut up, I bought the trilogy on PS3 because I didn't have much access to a PS2 back in the day)

April

Rogue Legacy (like, New Game +7 before my data corrupted and bumped me back down to +3)
Spyro the Dragon 100% (again, *I was a Nintendo kid)

May

Sly Cooper 100% (cold stare)
Sonic CD (*)
Monument Valley (mobile game, I figured they've matured enough to be considered "real" games now)

July

SHOVEL KNIGHT (GOTY All Years)
Wario Land (no excuses, I just never got around to it)

August

Dead Space (Mobile, actually quite good and very close to the main games)
Battlefield 4
Bioshock 2

September

Diablo III (plus the expansion. Not as much fun the second time through. Diablo II this is not)
Dark Void Zero (pretty fun NES-inspired spinoff of the mediocre forgotten third-person shooter Dark Void)

October

Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage! (*)

November

Need For Speed: Most Wanted (Mobile. Again, pretty good game. Mobile games finally count as "real" games to me)
Escape Goat (not the bonus levels yet, they're actually pretty tough)



Not as good as last year's list, but not too shabby. I'm pretty close to beating a few more games, but there's no way I'll finish any of them before midnight tonight, so they'll just have to wait until next year's list.

[Rahl]

To be honest I don't think I've played that many new games in 2014, but heres what I have:


Space Engineers- Love it, everything you would want in a spaceship building game

South Park Stick of Truth- Amazing game, heck I would have played it just for the RPG aspects of it

Life is Feudal - Pretty cool, but not enough content and its a huge grind a game that isn't on a mega server right now

Call Of Duty: AW- Now I have to say this one surprised me, normally I hate COD and its bandwagon fans with the fire of a thousand suns. But this one is different for me, I really like the mobility you have now and it feels like a different game than just a rehash of the original modern warfare game.


I'm sure there have been more but these are the ones that stand out for me.

[Cerebus]

I wish I could have enjoyed Advance Warfare, but for me, people jumping around and spending most their time on roofs became boring rather quickly. Oh and recoil-less AR's. I must admit, though, that I did enjoy when I was the one bouncing around, dodging bullets for a couple seconds before killing the guy shooting me.

I'm not really sure which games I've played, so I guess I'll list the very few I can think of.

WoW: MoP/WoD:
I've been playing this game for quite a while as well. Leaving and them coming back every once in a while. Good time waster. The new Expansion highly disappointed me, though. Never got bored of an Expansion so fast. I'll be trying it again in 6.1, though. If I still can't enjoy it, I'll check back even more later, or wait for the next expansion.

Diablo III:
A bit like WoW, I kept leaving and coming back. Except I had the luxury of being able to do so without any negative impact since there's no monthly fee...
I actually rather love this game, but usually in short bursts. I'll play a lot for a couple days, then stop for a long while. I'm currently in one of those burst.

Shadow of Mordor:
After testing the crap out of this game, I wanted to actually play and enjoy it. I already knew what to expect, yet it still didn't ruin it for me. Possibly because the story is rather so-so anyway, while the game play is the fun thing.
And I do need to point out that the pee VFX, they only added it after I reported the lack of it. This is, like, my pride and gloury.

Starbound:
It was fun, albeit difficult. But then it became kinda dull. It didn't have as much freedom as Terraria, despite the many planets, and the many planets actually made it not as fun since you could gather so much on the surface. The exploration wasn't as fun as Terraria either. I honestly felt a little disappointed from it because I expected much more. And now reading reviews, seems like the devs update it very infrequently. Quite disappointing.

WildStar:
It's that other MMO in space. It's quite fun, although the population is extremely lacking, which is quite a shame. There's also some minor issue with latency... or I guess so. As in, I,d often take damage while I was outside an enemy player's telegraph, and would often miss my attack on an enemy that is standing inside my telegraph, but close to the edge. Oh and that telegraph thing is the way you attack in this game. No Tab targetting, you have to aim and land your attack, displayed by this so called telegraph. It doesn't have as much to offer as WoW, that's for sure, but it's still kinda fun. However, the very low population can be quite game-ruining.

Heroes of the Storm:
I only got the invite recently, but I must say, it's rather fun. I actually feel like playing online when playing this, unlike LoL where I tend to stay with bots. However, it's still in technical Alpha, so it's not perfect, but I must say, it's not so imperfect either. The mine and golem map quickly became my least favourite after doing it 6 times in a row, though...

Starcraft II.
I've actually barely played, but I do like the game. However, I suck major balloons at it, so I keep it to bots or with my brother, who is equally as "good" as me. I'll probably play it again sooner or later.

Hearthstone:
Another game I've barely played but still enjoy. Thing is, it's not the kind of game I'd play on a laptop, and I do not own a tablet. Maybe once it's available for phone, I'll play again.

CoD: Ghost:
So, yeah, I'm not too fond of Advance Warfare, but I kind of enjoyed Ghosts, although I also hated it. It's a terrible game that I still enjoyed somehow. Didn't like how things unlocked, but enjoyed the way Prestige worked.

Battlefield 4:
I loved and hated it as well. I hated it less than I loved it, though. However, the rubberbanding issues I had to deal with at first were horrendous and extremely game-breaking. But what else should have I expected from EA. However, I felt like there were too many Engineers... but man, sniping was fun in this game. I sucked at it for most part, but nothing felt more satisfying than headshotting someone 500+ meters away. Nothing felt worse than getting headshotted from 500+ meters, though...

Smash Bros. 3DS.
Very fun! I love it. Being able to take off up-tilt jump was the best thing ever. The customization, though, wasn't as fun as I thought. But since I'd always play without it, I didn't mind the slightest. Kinda wished there would have been an Adventure Mode and Events. Maybe eventually I'll get myself a Wii U and its Smash Bros. version. I just need to clear off my credit card before...

And uh... I guess that's about it. There's other games as well, but they won't come to mind.

[Momeka]

Here's a few games I played this year in no particular order:

Shadow of Mordor:
The best open world game I played in a while. The whole nemesis system makes it pretty interesting sneaking around revisiting old places to find a way to take down the orc chief currently living there. The game falls flat on it's face at the end game and have one of the worst final bosses I played in awhile.

Team Fortress 2:
Oh god! Why can't I stop playing this? It stopped being fun ages ago.

Diablo 3 + Reaper of Souls:
Co-op'd through this with a buddy it was pretty fun. While the ride was fun I can't say I remember much of it now, you clicked on stuff until they dropped goodies, you check if the goodies have higher numbers on them and if so you equip them and move on.

Hearthstone:
I was way into this for awhile, even sunk some money into it. I haven't played many ccgs before but this feels pretty simplified compared to Magic. It's fun to think of decks and strategies and try them out even though they mostly end up sucking. These days I mostly play one or two games with friends from time to time.

Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS:
I'm not that big of a smash fan, pretty much ended up getting it through peer pressure. After I unlocked all the characters I more or less stopped playing except a few multiplayer matches with friends here and there. It's fun in small dozes.

Broken Age - Episode I:
Pretty art, pretty writing, pretty game.

The Ultimate Doom:
For some reason I never played doom from beginning to end before. I love it, it got interesting enemies and the level design is gold. Id was at the top of their game back then.

Thief Gold:
I haven't finished this game and I really should go back to it. It's another old one and the best stealth game I played. The level design is the strongest point of the game. There's often multiple ways to take to reach your goal. And higher difficulties doesn't make the enemies stronger or you weaker it instead adds way more objective to levels you have to complete.

Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon:
Superb soundtrack, lovely visuals and a solid shooter.

World of Warcraft:
This is the first time I'm really getting into an mmo. Me and a buddy started co-op'ing through it and I'm having a blast. I do love the open world feeling of it, that everything feels connected and not just zones you enter. Combat and quests feels pretty bland and uninteresting.
I found that just grinding up my mining skills is strangely meditative and can suck hours away from my day. I'm not sure if that's a good thing.

[Razor]

Doom:
Turned 21! **** yeah, Doom.

Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, The:
Some sweet **** this one. As someone who Platinum Boy'd the original I must say it's a worthy purchase.

Hatoful Boyfriend:
GOTY

Escape Goat 2:
Goaty

World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor:
Pretty damn solid. At least until I did everything and now I'm back to mining old content. Gotta get mounts!

Smash Bros 4:
is a pretty cool guy, eh bothers tourneyfags and doesn't afraid of anything.




Coming soon this month (or February?)
Heroes of Might and Magic 3: HD moneygrab:
I am looking forward to this one!

[Apex]

I don't have the time to type up a mini-review for each, so maybe I'll do one at a time or something.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengence- Oh god was I delightfully surprised with this one. It's a short experience, but every second of it is packed with spectacle. The game play is amazingly fun, the characters are cheesey, but seriously bad-*** when the story calls for it; the game play is fun-tastic, the music is exhilarating, the game play is jaw-droppingly awesome, the challenge is spot on, and encourages multiple playthroughs, I have a backlog of games I'm thrilled to play, and I still played through MGR:R a second time immediately after finishing it the first time; and most importantly, the game play is ****ing brilliant. Get this game/10. Seriously though, it's short and sweet, so if you're on a budget, you should wait for it to be on sale.

Dark Souls 2: Was more of the same, but that's exactly what I wanted. Large amounts of challenge, large amounts of pay off. Charming world, brutal combat, fun enemies, bosses that will seriously make you **** your pants with fear the first time you see them.

Animal Crossing New Leaf- It's Animal Crossing, you probably know exactly what to expect. It's a fun distraction for about 5-15 minutes a day that end ups being a rewarding experience the more time you invest into it.

Binding of Isaac Rebirth- +1. What hasn't already been said?

Mario Kart 8 +1
Smash Bros Wii U +1
Reaper of Souls +1
Link Between Worlds +1


BTW, we should start a counter on these. If more than one person recommends a title, we should keep track of that with a tally in the head post of this topic. That'd be fun and informative.

[SaiKar]

I was about to do this when I realized that most of the games I was going to talk about I was going to give negative reviews of. That's pretty depressing. Not the greatest year for new game releases by a long shot.

[Cerebus]

Any opinion's a valid one. While it's good to know why Mr. Man liked X game, knowing why  Mrs. Woman didn't can be as interesting to know.

[Meiscool]

BTW, we should start a counter on these. If more than one person recommends a title, we should keep track of that with a tally in the head post of this topic. That'd be fun and informative.

Love this idea

[Razor]

I was about to do this when I realized that most of the games I was going to talk about I was going to give negative reviews of. That's pretty depressing. Not the greatest year for new game releases by a long shot.

Do it. Everyone loves negative reviews. Everyone loves getting mad at a negative review.
Also if you have something bad to say about Rebirth I'll cut you
(JOKE???)

[Zoltar]

Shadow of Mordor:
The best open world game I played in a while. The whole nemesis system makes it pretty interesting sneaking around revisiting old places to find a way to take down the orc chief currently living there. The game falls flat on it's face at the end game and have one of the worst final bosses I played in awhile.

Was it better than Skyrim? I keep hearing about that Nemesis system but it doesn't look that impressive. Just liek KOTOR or Fable right? You appearance changes based on your choices? How much more can you do with that type of engine?

[Archem]

I haven't played Shadow of Mordor, but I somehow think that none of the games you mentioned have anything in common with it. At the very least, they only vaguely have something in common with each other.