Games of 2015

[Prpl_Mage]

I'm continuing my old tradition to make short reviews about the game I got and played this year

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

2014
http://www.charas-project.net/forum/index.php?topic=29125.0


PC


Dawn of war 1 Soulstorm/dark crusade and so on:
First of all, the dawn of war series is awesome. It's based on the warhammer 40k universe and is an RTS game with your favorite warhammer factions. Well at least if you got the expansion packs. First game is Marines, Orks, Chaos marine and Eldar. With the winter assault you get the Imperial Guard, with Dark crusade you add Tao and necron and the soulstorm adds the dark eldar and battle sisters. so there are several factions to choose from and each faction got its own special gimmick. Such as necron not using resources, just power. Anyway, the game is balanced and still looks kinda good, you can also adjust your team's colouring like the actual warhammer and play against others. The campaign for the first 2 games are kinda straight forward. But the campaign of dark crusade and soulstorm are kinda like one of those turn based strategy games mixed with RTS. This might need an explanation. Basically, you are put on a world map and where you start depends on the faction you picked. You goal is to conquer the whole map by defeating the
other factions. so every area is marked with colours depending on the faction controlling it. You can recruit troops to protect an area from attacks and such. When you attack or the enemy attack you you are taken to a normal skirmish battlefield where you do what you do best. You build your army and you steamroll the enemy or get steamrolled. But if another battle is to take place in this same area later in the game when someone attacks it - you get to keep most of your buildings you placed in the last battle. so that's really cool. Problem is that this isn't that much of a campaing. There is some story once you have battled your way to a faction's capitol area but it's kinda general to fit every faction faced. So it doesn't matter if you attack the Orks as necron or Marines. What's being said is pretty much the same, the battle is pretty much the same and the ending after you win is pretty much the
same. still, an awesome RTS game.


Heroes of might and magic 3 HD edition:
A remake of a great game with some working multiplayer much like the Age of empires - , age of mythology -, stronghold remakes. The game is suited to our HD screens but the graphics stay pretty much the same. The only bad part about this remake is that they only remade the original game without the two expansions. I fail to see a reason for this though. Why not remake the entire thing while you're doing it? To be honest, the expansions kinda made the game. Lots of great maps, more units, items, set items, great campaigns.


Age of mythology extended edition:
This game, or this remake is pretty much the same as the remake of Age of empires 2. Picture the mythology series to be the missing link between age of empires and the classical RTS and Warcraft. You have heroes, you have mythical units. Some units have abilities. There are some magic powers to use such as meteor or bronze armor. Great game to multiplay but otherwise it's like all other RTS, you play on a low difficulty and breeze through it, increase it one step and get zerged by a far too huge army after 5 minutes.


Sacred 2:
It was on sale on steam and I liked the first game and I heard the 3rd game was crap. Basically sacred was kind of a mix between the baldur gate games and diablo. So Sacred 2 is pretty much the same thing. While diablo focuses on getting from one place to the other and kill everything Sacred is more about the quests. So you have a world, a static world with locations placed on it. Playing the game several times will give you the same world. So in
some places there are quests and some caves, clearing the quests will give you exp and rewards, entering caves might lead to the excavation of some long forgotten treasure chest that might hold something good(or nothing special at all). Unlike Diablo you need to find skills to improve/learn skills. They drop like items and you simply click them to learn 'em. Levling up gives you points you can use to improve certain attributes instead and learn some
new ones. For example each class have 3 "aspects" (skill trees) and there is an attribute that improves the damage and cooldown of skills of a certain aspect as well as giving the option of adding additional traits to them. So basically you do a lot of quests, kill a lot of enemies and look for better gear and skills while exploring a huge world.


Sacred 3:
Not exactly close to Sacred 1 and 2 in gameplay. This is an action hack and slash with very limited rpg elements. And that's okay, the game is still good. But the fact that it is called Sacred 3 made people expect more of Sacred 2 in it. This has lead to overwhelming negative reviews on Steam. Amazing that a choice of title can do for a game. Gameplaywise this is a lot like Drakengard 3 or Heavenly sword. You control your character, walk along a path, fight some enemies, reach an open area, fight lots of enemies to open the path forward and then there's a boss at the end. You get experience in this one though to level up, and then you can spend your gold to replenish your potion supply or buy/upgrade skills. You can also equip different weapons that are unlocked by clearning certain story missions. The weapons themselves don't differ much in damage but the upgrades you can do with them differs a lot more. The battle system uses light attacks and heavy attacks and then 2 skills and 1 defensice move. The defencive move is either a dodge roll or a block stance. The skills vary between the classes of course but are basically ways to either deal a lot of damage or kill several enemies at once. My only problem with the game is the writing. Whoever wrote the script for this should be fired. Sure, Sacred 1 and 2 didn't have very serious dialogue or quest guidance or even story missions. But at least they didn't bend over backwards to appeal to a crowd that I assume is 12 year olds. It's like whoever wrote this was thinking "I think cool kids today speak like this, so this should be humorous". But the DLC aren't really worth it. Underworld story is 4 missions, one intro scene and one ending scene. Some story within but since the writing is horrible, yeah. 


Hereos of the Storm:
At first I was really psyched, then when I found out you need to buy each character I got really sad. Then they announced some more changes that "dumbed" it down. But then for some unexplainable reason (actually it was because I had to log in to claim my free Diablo) I gave it an honest chance. The game is actually really polished. There are different maps to play at and while each one has the same goal as any other so called MOBA to destroy the enemy base they each have an event / mission that can help. The pirate map have you collect coins from treasure chests and mercenary camps to unlock 10 shots of a cannon that will fire at the enemy structures. Several of the maps have things you do to unlock a really powerful monster that will march on the enemy base, sometimes controlled by a player. Anyway, there is no money, all experience is shared between all the teammates so you level up simultainiosly. This creates a good balance in the game, it's not like in Dota2 where a character that is preyed on starts to lag behind in levels or that one guy getting fed is a walking battle fortress. However, each hero has to make a "talent choice" every 3 levels that improves skills, adds passives or another active ability. While most Moba level up skills are pretty much like this: "lvl 1, 120 dmg, 1 second stun" "lvl 2, 210 dmg, 1.5 second stun" the talents are a bit more creative. For example, Zagara the Brood Queen character has a baneling skill that fires a line of suicidal banelings, another is to lay a creep tumour on the ground that gives you a passive speed and hp regen buff. At some point you need to choose your talent,
one is that the banelings will roll longer, the other is that your creep tumours buff more and the mana cost is reduced. So you have to make some choices that affects how your character turns out.
The best thing about this compared to Dota2 is that the games are generally over pretty fast. If you have ever battled your way up in the ranks of Dota2 then you know that most games tend to be 30-60 minutes. In HoS (so far) my longest game has been 31 but I think I average around
15-20. But still, the fact that no characters are unlocked at all is kinda sad. I had Vala and Diablo unlocked thanks to owning Diablo 3 though. Each week 8 hereos are Free to play, this can be increased to 10 and maybe more by getting "account levels". Besides that you can purchase character for 7000-10000 ingame gold. You get a little gold after each game(like 10 for vs AI and 30 for player) and also by completing the criteria for daily quests(200-500). if you don't feel like doing that you can buy the characters with real money, but a character is usually 5€-10€. So it's pretty expensive if you want to buy every character. Luckily there are bundles, so sometimes you can get 8 characters, some mounts and costumes for 30€ or 4 hereos for 10€. Still money but not nearly as much.

Grandia 2:
Added to steam. They say that it is remastered, I honestly think that's a load of bull. Still, it's far prettier than FF7 and has a pretty good story. Most characters have voice actors (the usual American voice actors that are in everything these days) as well. The game uses a turn based system where there is a time between you choosing an action and executing it. Using a spell for example takes a lot longer time between choosing and executing compared to a normal attack. Why is that? It allows the player to cancel and counter enemies. Using certain heavy moves can cancel an enemy's spell or even normal attack if you are lucky enough. The characters move around the battlefield when an action is chosen so it gets kinda messy sometimes. Besides the battle system you aslo have the Mana Egg, Skill Tome thing. They work almost the same. When you win a battle you get exp, gold, Sp and MP. The Sp is points you can spend to upgrade skills and skill tomes, each skill tome (passive stat bonus and stuff) can be assigned to a characters empty skill slot. Mp is used to power up the magic stored in a mana egg. A mana egg holds like 18 different spells, each can be leveled up to increase the damage and unlock more spells in it. An egg can be equiped to a character and thereby granting access to all those spells. The story is pretty good, but the moving sounds on the overworld is awful.


Borderlands the presequel:
If you like borderlands or borderlands 2 you will like this one as well. 4(6 with DLC) new characters with their own skill trees and customization. it is a standalone game but a lot of it is obviously built upon borderlands 2, including the interface, several models and such. This story basically takes place between borderlands and borderlands 2, making it a presequel and you get to follow the new story of how Jack the hyperion responsible for the Helios
station turned into Handsome Jack the head of the hyperion company and colonization of pandora. The game takes place on the helios station as well as the moon of Pandora called Elpis. With the moon comes vaccuum, low gravity, the ability to jump again to glide a little thought the air and crouching in the air to do a slam attack. A new piece of equipment is added to handle all these new thingies called an O2 kit (or Oz kit). This replaces the slot
used for Relics in the previous game and gives O2 capacity, slam damage and some other bonuses depending on type. Som increases stats while in the air, others have a bonus in gravity and another for vaccuum and so on. The new characters are pretty neat, Athena is a tanky tank, Claptrap is random, Wilhelm is rocking robots and Nisha is... Well, like Mordecai and Zero with guns. Then there is Jack's doppelganger and Lady Aurelia, the baroness is the
ultimate multiplayer character having a skill that makes party members sign a contract. Killing enemies while under the contract gives bonuses to the baroness and the "servant". There are a whole bunch of new enemies added to the game as well. Kragons, Shaggaraths, Ryleths, Torkks. The only returning pandora creature is the stalker. Also near the end you get to fight some Eridians again. In case you missed those from borderlands 1. Another neat thing is the weapon grinder. You can throw in 3 items of the same quality to reroll it into a new item. You can also spend Moonstones(this game's verison of eridium) to increase the chane of it becoming a better quality. Anyway, back to the story, it's rather short, much like borderlands 1. And you don't really get all questions answered in the game either. Like, where is Angel? Why isn't that crazy AI participating in the takeback of the station? To fool the Vault hunters Roland and Lilith to help out? And how did the other hyperion personel come to work for Jack? And why does Moxxi have a bar on Elpis? A good thing though is that playing True vault hunter mode, new game + adds some new commentary along the story. Tiny Tina asks that the story is told again but you have to make it harder. So basically, True vault hunter mode is the game with Tiny tina commentary.


Nidhog
A 1vs1 competative game where you control a pixelated character and duel another one. Each stage consists of a certain number of screens where you move through. Killing the other player just makes them respawn though so it's important to move forward and not stall. Reach the end of the stage makes you the winner. The problem is just that a game can take anywhere between 3-43 minutes depending on how even the two players are. I thought this would be a great addition to a party type thing I had but then these two people hogged it for 43 minutes! A single game... So that's about the problem with it. Otherwise the controls are pretty brilliant, low, middle high attacks. Blocking attacks with your sword in the right height, jumping, jump kicks, low kicks, rolling, throwing your sword, wrestling people to the ground and all that.


Towerfall accension
A 2-4 arena battler with arrows. You fight in areas that loop horizontal and vertically. You have a limited amount of arrows and need to collect your arrows when you run out of them. There are different types of stages and characters that you can play that creates some diversity. And that's about it, you fight fight and fight


Grim Fandango
One of those lovely point and click adventure games like monkey island. Grim fandango uses 2d backgrounds with 3d models, ring any bells? Yeah, all the ps1 final fantasies of course. This is a remodelled version making those 3 models slightly more detailed. That's 'bout it. You play as Manny a grim reaper who only manages to be a grim reaper in chapter 1, then his life gets screwy as the story progresses through the 5 chapters and the finale. Like a lot of
these games you need to find a use of items and speak to people to progress. It's pretty tricky of course as a lot of the puzzles are far fetched. So you will get stuck a lot and in the end have to ask a friend to use a guide.What I can say however is that this game gots good writing and voice actors.


Talisman Digital edition
Digital version of an old rpg table top game card game thingy. It's really fun but relies a lot on dice rolls. In combat you match your strength against the enemy's strength, and then you both roll a dice to add 1-6 extra strength and the one with the highest wins. The good thing here is that you have a "fate" stat that you can use whenever you roll to roll again. This depletes one fate though. A lot of map locations you can land on requires you to roll
the dice, a lot of cards require you to roll the dice. Basically, there are a lot of dice rolls and it can sometimes feel rigged in a digital game. There are tons of dlc for this game as well but the basic game has 20 characters so its cool, also if another player hosts with all the dlc you can use it as well


Tabletop simulator
Basically just a physics engine with some handy plugins and an easy import system for your own resources. A deck can be shaken to shuffle it, or press R. You can choose "deal" from a deck to move the top card to a player's hand (this is hidden from the others) and some other neat tricks. The rest is like a real tabletop game though. You can't code any rules to act during the game, like limiting how many cards to play. If a person throws 4 cards you need to tell them, just like in real life, and then it gets frustrating, and then a person will just flip the table... So don't play with randoms online. Play with friends. There is also a lot of user made contents, mostly imports of retail games into a digital form. Smash up, mage knight, carcassone, munchkin, WoW TCG and pretty much whatever you can think of. So the good thing is that you can swap around as much as you like or make your own decks or change existing games. But again, rules, everyone needs to follow them. You can make custom tiles, square, circle and hexes. Cards, up to 69 imported as a deck at a time, a token that stacks on top of each other and last  3d models on a play piece or a paper piece on a play piece.


PS3

Brütal Legend:
Kinda special game, it's set in an awesome metal rock world where everything is loosely based on the glorious age of rock. You are Eddie a guy stuck in this world trying to do something awesome. Anyway, the game is kinda a mix between Overlord and GTA? Or something, kinda like an open world overlord at least. You can do a bunch of sidequests and find hidden objects in the world in-between missions and also pimp your ride and buy upgrades from Ozzy Osbourne. So what's the problem with the game? Well for starters it's kinda short. GTA and Saints row and whatever manages to have a storyline filled with worthless missions where you are tasked to ride someone around town or from one place to another to give the opportunity for the characters to interact. Brutal legend could've done something like this. The first couple of missions are great, variety, story and stuff like that. But the second half of the game is pretty much going from one big stage battle to the next. stage battles? Well, um picture your typical RTS where you build troops and have a base. it's pretty much the same thing, but you need to capture fans to get a resource income and then you send and buff your troops across
the battlefield to take down your opponents stage/base. It's a great concept, but RTS games like starcraft 2 don't have every missions being "win this battle", it gets kinda boring once you have your build and all you have to do is execute it correctly and make minor adjustments to counter the enemy. overall, the setting is great and the kinda rushed story is kinda unique and adds something, but the gameplay itself could've been a bit more refined.


Kingdom hearts 2.5 HD remake
To be honest a much better collection than KH 1.5. This is kingdom hearts 2 (great game), Birth by sleep (amazing game especially if you liked crisis core) and then Re:coded as a feature. The good thing about this? Birth by sleep is a psp game so I suspect a lot of people never played it, but its great. Re.coded was a cell phone game? So noone played it outside of Japan I suspect. So it's a great collection!


Hyperdimension Neptunia 3 Victory:
This game is basically the same as HDN2. Most of the character models are the same and enemies as well. But there is a new interface and some new character models to spice things up. The combat is pretty much the same as the previous game but you no longer have AP(action points) that you needed to attack or use skills. This time you are limited to doing 1 thing each turn. This might seem bad but it's also kinda nice, since you needed a certain amount of AP to use skills in the previous game. Hard to explain but it's a change. Now you gather points by killing stuff in a dungeon that unlocks EX skills which is basically a 5th attack, stronger than the rest when you finish your combo. This replaces the previous system where
inputting a special combo such as "Triangle, cross, cross, circle" would trigger a combo skill. All points are lost when you exit the dungeon though.
Speaking of dungeons, they are way better than the previous games. 1st game just gave you long corridors with random encounters. Second game replaced the RE with overworld monsters but instead reused the same 5 dungeons for every area. This time there are more versions using the same theme and several places have more than one floor. You can also send "scouts" to dungeons to make something happen there. The game gives you Neptune as the hero this time instead of Nepgear. The story takes you away from the previous world into an alternative dimension where Neptune doesn't exist and the CPU of Planeptune is Plutia instead. Plutia is therefore one of the new characters. This is kinda nice since you've been stuck with If, Compa, Nisa and Gust during the previous games. The presence of the villains are used more as well as you get to butt in on their conversations. I kinda like that, first game had pretty much none while the second game flung the same two henchmen at you throughout the game. Some of new characters, or well, their CPU formes are kinda exaggerated but this game is a lot about fanservice so I'm not surprised. I should probably point Still, it's a solid turn based RPG game with anime like cell shaded graphics and stuff that you can enjoy.


Heavenly Sword:
So this game was praised for strong female lead and a lot of crap like that. I don't get it, that's only why I call it crap. I get that female characters need to be a bit more appealing to the male sex when making a game like this but it is kinda ridiculous when the game starts in a snowy mountain and the protagonist is running around in underwear and a half 1 sleeved kimono or something. I mean, Bayonetta is doing the sexy thing as well, but it never pretends to be a serious game. The characters are : Narika, angsty female lead. Kai, a female golum with catlike hat and a crossbow, Nariko's father Shen who is a stern but just man. And then there are the 4 villains, Bohdan a pretty entertaining emperor with a weak mind, his misformed abomiation of a son Roach, some serpent water witch and a psycho ninja called Flying fox. Anyway, that out of the way. This must be the first PS3 game... Ever, that uses the controllers' Synaxis motion thingy. When shooting with a crossbow or a cannon you can hold down the button and then steer the projectile by wobbling the controller back and forth. The problem is that they don't really teach you this. Or well, they give you the mission to take down 25 ninjas that are trying to enter a town, you are hidden above the entrance and have to kill them before they enter. For this you are in a stuck position and have to fire the crossbow and steer the shots to kill them. You could try to do it without steering but the steering makes the game go in slow motion, so you kinda benefit from doing it anyway. Some time after they give you the mission to take down 3 catapults with a cannon, there is no real rush and nothing that can hurt you. Yet this easy mission takes place after the hard one mentioned above. it wasn't until the cannon part that I actually had the time and patience to learn it. There are some more puzzles in the game that uses the motion control as well but most them are equally frustrating.
What about the battle system? it's okay, pretty good but not great. You press the R and L buttons to use different stances that uses different attacks and combos (although the L button is the range stance and all combos are "Square, Square, Square, Square, Square" or Triangle -..."). This is pretty cool and makes it easy to mix and match. The problem is that all enemies guard all the time more or less making most attacks do 0 damage to them. The most efficient way to defeat enemies is to use counters. The counters when timed right will instantly kill an opponent. Otherwise you will throw them to the ground, and on the ground you can finish them, much like Prince of Persia. To be honest, the combat is a bit like Prince of persia. So the game is divided into chapters, there are 6 chapters in total with the 6th being the final boss battle. This makes the game pretty short. I The problem with the
stages however are 3 things: 1. You cannot change the camera. The camera is locked, you can however pan the screen slightly to the left or right. 2. There is nothing to find. Well, there are some glowing urns that heals you to full life and gives you some score. 3. Most puzzles in the game are "hit this gong with a thrown object that you have to control using synaxis" or "you now play as the cat golum and need to shoot these explosives with a fire
arrow by steering your arrow through a brazier before hitting the explosives". So that's a shame.


Drakengard 3
They never released this as a physical copy, I didn't understood why. Anyway, the FMV intro trailer looked rad. Squareenix pumping out money to the visual appartment. And then you start the game and the first thing you hear before the title screen is a child voice saying "Zero, are there any bushes here?I really need to pee.". The problem is this: the game is suffering from some sort of mental disorder where it will try to be cool and dark one moment and then be a lot more like your general Tales of game with silly moments. Also, Zero the protagonist is pissed about just about everything. Makes me think of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArwEgM14QHs . Also, all conversations between the characters are about sex, violence or killing each other. With my concerns about the theme out of the way let's move on to the actual game. The game consists of chapters, each chapter has a
couple of missions. Each mission is divided into parts with checkpoints. Pretty much every mission is linear, it's a shame but that's that. You start at one point, move ahead and kill a bunch of stuff, listen to some dialogue between the characters or the soldiers, cutscene of enemies appearing, some pathway blocked until you defeat all the enemies and then some sort of boss at the end. Killing enemies gives you a random item, the items are however converted into gold at the end of the missions. So basically all enemies drops gold. There are boxes in the stages that can be broken, they usually give you the same items as the enemies but also healing orbs. Each mission has 3 "hidden" chests as well, these can be opened for a fancy reward such as new weapons, upgrade material or gold. Speaking of weapons. You can have 4 different types of weapons equipped that you can swap in combat quite smoothly. Each type of weapon has a couple of different versions, the big thing is that they vary in size which affects the moves and combos. You can also upgrade weapons using gold and the upgrade materials dropped by chests. To unlock the final ending you need to find all the weapons in the game though and that's kinda grindy, but easily done if you have a habit of collecting all the chests.

[Prpl_Mage]

PSP


Valkyria Chronicles 2:
The psp sequel to the PS3 game. In many ways this game is a huge improvement, but then there are the limits of the psp and well, the problem with writing a story sequel to a pretty good game that had a clear ending. Okay so the cons first, it makes a better review. The story itself: there is a civil war going on and you follow an optimistic, lazy, food loving hillbilly called Avan who has enlisted in military school. So it's kind of a japanese college drama to begin with. The next problem is the PSP limits, instead of having pretty large maps to fight on each battle usually takes place in 1-3 areas instead. Each area is connected with the bases that you can capture. So usually half your units start in one area and the other half in a new one. It gives the game a new feeling in a sense. And well, less units in each place. That's also a pro however, in the PS3 game your units usually fell behind which meant that you had to waste turns getting them to the front.  Besides that the pros are the unit classes. The protagonist can freely change between the game's classes. And the number of classes have increased. In the previous game there was Scout, Shocktrooper, Sniper, Lancer and Engineer and tanks. This game made Sniper an upgrade of scouts and added a new class called technicians, technicians carry a huge shield and use melee attacks, they can also clear mines. Mines are also really powerful this time and can easily destroy your tank. One upgrade of the technician can plant mines while the other is called a fencer and focuses more on the melee attacks. The shocktrooper got the gunner upgrade that gives them a gattlin gun. The lancers can become mortarers that are good against units instead of tanks .And the engineers can become some sort of marching band unit that boosts units. So that's good, diversity. Still, it's a great game concept that I really enjoy, they also added a lot more skrimishes so you play some more game. I felt like there were less units to choose from however but it's a portable so that's grand. Also, increasing the "reputation" of a squad member results in some skits and  usually unlocks a playable skrimish that rewards you with something neat. Great game.


3DS


Monster hunter 4 ultimate:
I can only say good things about the game. It's handheld only, but added the online multiplayer that 3U lacked (and it works freaking great). There are a lot more monsters and event quests, two new weapon types, several new and returning weapons and armour sets. Even armour sets and weapons from monsters not in the game can be crafted thanks to a trading system. The "village" got an actual story with cutscenes and different cities each one with something special about them. There are also some NPC hunters that you'll see fight some monsters or take part in the story as well. Another great thing is the expeditions of the game, you can set out to a random generated area with a random pick of monsters and materials. After completing it there is a chance that you unlock a so called "guild quest" for a specific monster. These can be shared between players so a buddy of mine sent me a Kirin Quest. Anyway, as you complete these guild quests they rise in level, for each level the monster grows stronger and tougher. In the end they will require you to have an appropriate hunter rank to fight. In G rank you get a so called scroll, by completing harder quests you unlock some of the symbols of the scroll. once the scroll is deciphered you earn a new mission. This is anything from an Akantor, to a Pissed Brachydios, or an even larger Gogmazios. A new thing is a trait known as "frenzy", in some quests the monsters will do their death pose but then awaken again with some purple aura and red eyes. They get stronger, don't tire as easily and their attacks inflict you with the new status prob known as virus. Later in G rank you find Apex monsters as well, these are like frenzy frenzy monster. They are so infected that 90% of their bodies will deflect your attacks. For both of these traits you can punch them out of them with enough damage. By doing this they will become normal monsters for a couple of minutes before becoming frenzy again. It's kind of an unnecessary thing but it's still a pretty neat concept.


Kid Icarus uprising:
Wow, this game must be the most underrated game ever. I got this on a sale because I was kinda curious (and it was the first time I found as only the game and not with additional 3ds stand or AR cards or whatever was in that huge box). The game is great, and you can tell that some people involved with the development of the latest smash were doing some work here. Well beside the obvious proof such as Palutena being in smash and also a complete clone called Dark pit. Anyway, you have the same system with intensity as in the smash game, you use your hearts (coins) to increase the intensity and that in turn increases the reward. But the rewards here are a bit more valuable than in Smash since you equip weapons with stats and such. So playing on the low intensities might give you a weapon of power 100-180 or so while the higher ones are higher period. The story consists of 25 chapters, each chapter is a 5 minute air battle thing, that reminds a lot of starfox but you are pit instead, followed by the actual stage where you can explore and fight monsters on the ground. It's a rather simple concept but it works really well, you know what's gonna happen and you don't have to spend a lot of attention during the air battle part. The game features several characters as well, some are used more than others. This kinda surprised me since it's a rail shooter air battle thing with some 3rd person shooter-ish ground battling. You don't actually see most of the characters, but they appear as portraits (fire emblem style) on the bottom screen. Some are also seen though, but mostly in the conversations. The conversations in the game are mostly there for the humour. And I'd say they did a good job. Some of the conversations are banter and some of the banter is kinda 4th wall breaking (or meta) such as Pit questioning the name "striker blade" for a long ranged gun blade thing or when pit comments that tapping forward twice to run reminds him of something. You get it, it suits some but not others. Anyway, the game also has a 3v3 arena thing where you can fight with other people online. And I could still find a game after like 10 seconds waiting. And that's kinda amazing coming from a 3 year old portable game.


Fantasy Life
Amazing 3ds game that is really expansive. There are 12 classes to choose from. There are the monster killing ones: Paladin, Mercenary, Mage and Hunter. The Resource gathering ones: Woodcutter, miner and angler. And then crafting ones: Carpenter, blacksmith, tailor, alchemist, cook. Each of these "lives" has their own progress quests, when you have enough points from the progress quests you can proceed to the next "level" of that life. This gives access to some new skills and recipes. Besides the life progress quests there are also story quests and normal mission quests. Mission quests are luckily pretty varied, it could be to kill stuff, to get some materials or to craft them something of a certain quality. This game is just a big pile of synergy. There is monster fighting so you need a monster killing life to kill monsters and get materials from them. Then you need a crafting job to craft stuff to make it easier to kill monsters, to craft stuff you need to gather materials with a resource gathering job and so on. The thing I like the most is also the fact that gathering materials and crafting stuff require a teeny tiny bit of skill. To mine you spent stamina to hit with your pickaxe, there is the normal swing and the heavy swing. If you "overkill" the ore then you get an extra item drop so you need to have some sort of plan. Also, you can mine ores that are for a higher level class with the right equipment, buffs and planning. During crafting you have 3 different tables, each one usually comes with a different action: timing a reel like Tidus' overdrives, mashing the a button, and holding down the button. If you do these fast enough your item can get a higher quality. Also, repetitively making the same item unlocks multi crafting, then auto crafting and last multi-auto crafting. So its a great game with a lot to do, sometimes you get a bit overwhelmed when you reach a new area. I suppose the only bad thing is how limited the multiplayer is.


Wii U


Starwahl
Great 4 player coop op game, I got this for the Wii U but it's available for pretty much everything. You have two controls, steering the head and swimming. Then you fight in arenas and try to poke the other starwahls in their hearts. That's about it. There are also other game modes, 5 life battle, 5 point battle, capture the zones, capture the crown. Great fun when you need a break from all the super smash and mario kart.


Fast racing neo
Kinda like a new F-Zero only without iconic characters, music, stages and less vehicles. There are 10-12 different vehicles with different combinations of speed, acceleration and weight that look kinda the same to be honest that can race in 4 different cups. Each cup has 4 stages so 16 stages in total. The single player mode have these 4 cups in different difficulty of easy, normal and hard and each difficulty level is faster than the previous one.
Like previous f zero you use the shoulder buttons to lean left and right, hold both to make sharper turns. There is also a boost power, you need to collect orbs on the track to get boost power to use, depleting it doesn't make you blow up as in GX though, but any frontal crash will destroy you. There are also booster plates on the track, to get the boost you must change your "exhaust" between the orange and blue colour. That's about it. Racing game.


Bayonetta 2:
One of the reasons I got a Wii u to begin with. Well that and multiplayer games, and smash bros, and monster hunter and - well you get the idea. So this is the sequel to the hack and slash Bayonetta, made by platinum game who also made Metal gear revengeance and Incredible 100. Basically it's awesome. They didn't just reuse the same monsters from the last game in this one like some do. They made a new batch of angels to kill and even some demons. My only concern for this game is the lack of epic boss battles. Don't get me wrong, there are boss battles but they are simply not as cool as the one in the previous game. For example you fight pretty much the same boss 3 times during the game(same as the previous game). Besides that they added some more characters to care about and some sort of story to follow. You have some assistance from time to time and that's nice, but they kinda tend to 1 shot everything. Besides that there is some coop battles to play, seperate from the main story but you unlock most by playing the story. Also, one thing that surprised me was that the Muspeilheim (challenges) felt easier in this one compared to the previous game. I think there's still 1 I haven't been able to clear in that one. The new weapons in the game are pretty interesting and they added all the bonus nintendo costumes that are available in the new version of bayonetta 1 as well. I guess my main problem is that I didn't play bayonetta until recently so I didn't have the chance to miss this enough.


Hyrule warriors:
Applauds to every person involved in this project. They managed to do something cool with the zelda series and still do it with a large amount of respect. Sure, the antagonist is a bit too sexy in that typical "evil female magician in a bodysuit and a whip"-way but still. There are several characters from the different zelda games, Ocarina of time, Twilight princess and skyward sword. Also a Dlc pack includes some Majoras mask characters as well. I just kinda wish they would've added more characters and such from the other zelda games. Maybe not as important story characters but for something. None of the handheld zeldas are given any attention here, Rod of season/ages, Minish cap, Link to the past, Phantom hourglass, hell not even Windwaker is given attention. Still, the storymode is longer than I expected and pretty much managed to be a coherent storyline. The most time you put into the game is in the Adventure Mode where you walk around an 8 bit world map based on the old games. Each area is a battle you can fight to unlock stronger weapons for a character, a character, an outfit for a character and so on. Some battles can't be fought until you "solve the puzzle" which is pretty much "use the right item based on the map objects", problem is that you need to use it on the right tile as well. To find out what tile an item should be used you need a compass. Both those items and the compass are won as rewards for certain ranks on other maps. For example, winning at C rank or higher might net you a torch, you can use to torch to burn away bushes. but you don't know which bush so you play another map to get a compass. This creates a need for items and therefore a need to replay old stages. And that's great because you kinda need that to level up to have a chance in the new ones anyway. An awesome game that made a great series have a great spin off. Also, really priceworthy DLC.


Xenoblade chronicles X
The almost sequel to Xenoblade chronicles on the wii. Bye bye amazing brittish voice actors, welcome back to the lame american voice actors. For starters you create the protagonist (you) as in any dragon age or mass effect game. Change some face, hair and colours. Choose one of 5 voices. However, the character itself will never speak so the voices are merely for battle dialogue. I get why you would do this but it feels bland. To be honest, so far in the story my charactre might as well not be in the game as well. I'm in chapter 6 and my character isn't participating in the dialogue of the story missions. It's mostly, "don't you agree?" and the game is giving me 2 dialogue choices "nod your head in agreement" "shake your head and say that you don't think this is the right thing to do". Choosing option one makes your character nod their head, no dialogue is spoken and then the npcs responds with a sentence before moving on with the dialogue. It feels old in a way, mass effect's choices weren't always great but at least the character had a point and interacted with the others. You character here is more or less Link. Oh , you also have an annoying Nopon in the party as a traveling companion who is like a round and fluffy jar jar binks. My next complaint is the size of the text, I don't know if its a font thing,if I should consider getting a new tv or glasses or whatever. The text is too small. The menus, dialogue options, interface and so on. I simply can't read it from my couch. It's fine with any other game but not this one- I was running around picking up items in the field and I just couldn't read what item I just picked up. So I'm playing this on the gamepad to get closer to the screen. Speaking of the gamepad. You need it as a map, and on the map you can get information about areas (divided into hexes), change your frontiernav nodes and fast travel. The frontiernav nodes are locations in the world that you need to capture, these gives you a steady income of cash and mineranium as well as creates a fast travel location. Each node can be upgraded to certain different node types such as mining nodes that give less cash but more minerals, or the research that gives more cash but less minerals. Yeah you get it. Nodes close to each other forms a chain and having the same type of node gives a chain bonus.
Back to the game, the battle system is much like the old one. Only problem is that you can only control your protagonist. And the battle style of your protagonist can change with a class system. There are 6 classes pretty much, 3 paths at the start and then 2 on each of those paths. After the last path choice comes a direct upgrade. Each class have skills (passives) and arts (active) that you assign to your available slots. Thing with the classes is that they use different types of weapons, and all the arts are connected to the weapons rather than the class. Getting to the highest level with a class unlocks that weapon type for use in any class making it a really expansive system. Much like the last game you have a Stagger > Topple system to make enemies fall down, it gives you some control over combat, there are also skills that gives bonuses if used from the front, side or back and even when used in combos with other skills. In combat you also build morale, a party member can give a battle cry with a dialogue box in a certain colour, this represents the different types of arts. Melee, ranged, aura, healing and status problems. Using an art of the corresponding type gives a small health restore and also the potential for a action input that increases affinity. Besides all that the world is pretty huge, each hex on the map has a lot of things in them from monsters, tyrants (mini bosses), objects of interest, point of interests and so on. There are also items laying around in the form of blue crystals that can be picked up for resources. These are pretty tricky though since they are connected to certain hexes but you can't really tell without a fan made map showing the locations. Also, when you get your skell (gundam robot) everything gets different. Just saying. Also, the multiplayer of this game is basically non existent. Being connected to the interwebs allows you to see comments from people on your server (squad), participate in squad mission (all of you 300 people on this server needs to kill 10 doougals, 10 grex, 15 blattas, 5 insidius or whatever) once that is done a huge monster will appear and you can join the mission to participate in killing it and earning a reward. Only the last part is multiplayer in any sense though. There are also minor missions where you can invite people to join you. So that's good, but there is no teaming up to fight together.

[Donut]

Sacred 2:

The PS3 menus of this game are so bad and so not practical that I gave up after 20 min. I prefer a lot more Sacred 3 (currently playing), even though the writing is terrible...

Kingdom hearts 2.5 HD remake
To be honest a much better collection than KH 1.5. This is kingdom hearts 2 (great game), Birth by sleep (amazing game especially if you liked crisis core) and then Re:coded as a feature. The good thing about this? Birth by sleep is a psp game so I suspect a lot of people never played it, but its great. Re.coded was a cell phone game? So noone played it outside of Japan I suspect. So it's a great collection!

Coded was originally a mobile game. RE:Coded was the DS port of this mobile game and came out outside Japan too. Although it is an extremely BAD game.


----------------

As for me, This year I completed 29 games o/
Won't go into much details though, that's too many otherwise xD
 
12-28-15
 Completed: Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles - Rings Of Fate  (NDS)
      Was not expecting much. Was a good A-RPG, despite the awful IA (like in most SE games). Good story and I liked the characters

12-22-15
 Completed: Summon Night - Swordcraft Story  (GBA)
     Overall an interesting game. The problems are more battle-wise, with a really easy game overall, but when you go to arenas, the battles are nearly impossible, mainly because your character is SO SLOW. They tried doing a battle system like Tales of Phantasia, but without it being nervous, which does not work... Otherwise story is pleasant, and characters nice.

12-11-15
 Beat: Persona Q  (3DS)
      It took me AGES to finish this one. It gets repetitive very fast, the possibilities of the gameplay can all be experienced in the first 10h. The problem is the game is 60h long. The story does not go anywhere before the 50th hour. And way too much fan-service. Although, the game is brilliant in its level design and you should probably play it just for that.

11-29-15
 Completed: .hack Part IV  (PS2)
    The only interesting game of the .hack on PS2. We finally get somewhere, even though it's still highly repetitive. The other 3 games are mostly just trying to make you lose time.

11-25-15
 Completed: .hack Part III  (PS2)

11-06-15
 Completed: Deus Ex - Human Revolution  (360)
   It was a good game, although disappointing. They could have gone to a better moral and story overall, since everything stays highly cliché, and can be guessed after 2-3h of playing the game. It's disappointing in terms of level design as well, at least for Eidos. DARK (a second zone game) made so much better of it. I liked how it is possible to choose to go heads up or stealth style, even though the game gives so much more awards and EXP bonuses if you do it discretly.

10-28-15
 Completed: Goosebumps: The Game  (360)
   I really liked the books when i was a kid and I'm looking forward for the movie to come out in Switzerland. The game is a basic Point & Click game. Not too difficult, the story is not the best, bue it's ok.

09-28-15
 Beat: Daikaijuu Monogatari  (SNES)
     Big surprise for this one. I saw a translation for it (Super Shell Monster Story) and it's just amazing. A good old style RPG, with great graphics, characters, interesting features. It's a bit too long though, but I enjoyed it very much.
08-19-15
 Beat: Atelier Iris - Eternal Mana  (PS2)
     First Atelier game I finish. The mechanics are quite simple and old-style, but the story is nice and characters too.

07-23-15
 Completed: .hack Part II  (PS2)

07-11-15
 Completed: Tales Of Legendia  (PS2)
     I got SO bored of the Tales Of recently. They are all the same: same kind of story (when not taken entirely from FFX, yes, I'm talking to you Symphonia), same kind of characters, battle-system does not change much, and the music is almost all the time terrible. Tales of Legendia is not one of those. It's a great game and a refreshing Tales Of precisely because the story and characters are nothing alike the characters in the other games. Battle-wise it's pretty much the same but it's one of the most nervous Tales Of I played (and I played almost all of them), and the music is brilliant. It's a really pretty game too. Really on of the best Tales Of I played.

06-03-15
 Completed: Syberia 2  (360)
   Got told it was brilliant. It's not. I've never been so bored by an adventure game.

05-26-15
 Completed: Abyss Odyssey  (360)
   Interesting concept. The gameplay requires you to be precise. A good challenge, and a neat artistic direction. I liked it a lot.

05-22-15
 Completed: Child Of Light  (360)
    I tried that game... something like 4 times, and each time the game was corrupting my saves so I had to start all over. It finally worked at some point. And despite the great music and the story, I could not get into this game. The French narrator voice was real bad, most of the characters and their abilities are totally useless, and the story takes itself too seriously at the end. I still can't believed I haven't played a good Ubisoft game despite Valiant Wars since Rayman 3...

05-21-15
 Completed: Syberia  (360)
   Pretty much the same as the 2nd one

05-13-15
 Completed: Dark  (360)
   Ok it's a game about vampires. Ok, the story is cliché, and characters too. But OMG the level design is so brilliant, especially if you try to do it without being detected, that you'll forget all of that.

04-17-15
 Completed: Kingdom of Amalur  (360)
   I don't like W-RPG so much, but this one made me rethink about it. Nothing is innovative in this game, but it is just so pleasant to play...

03-26-15
 Completed: Blackwell Epiphany  (PC)
   The best of the Blackwells (the ending !!!). Despite the fact that the others are kinda boring, they deserved to be played just to be able to understand fully the last one.

03-25-15
 Completed: Blackwell Deception  (PC)

03-23-15
 Completed: Crimson Shroud  (3DS)
  As a big fan of Matsuno and tabletop RPGs, I could not let this go away... However, I just hated it. Nothing is good in this game. The battles rely way too much on luck on your part, because the ennemy will always succeed in whatever it's doing, while you're not. The story sucks, the characters suck, the weapon upgrade is one of the worst I've seen in video game and is mostly useless

03-14-15
 Completed: South Park - The Stick of Truth  (360)
   I don't like South Park. I tried liking it with this game. It did not work.

03-07-15
 Beat: Prey  (360)
  Indian in space woop! A fun game, it's a bit sad you cannot really die though, it spoils it a bit.

03-06-15
 Completed: Blackwell Convergence  (PC)
  Completed: Blackwell Unbound  (PC)

03-04-15
 Completed: Blackwell Legacy  (PC)

02-28-15
 Completed: Blood Of Bahamut  (NDS)
   I expected so much for this game... It's so repetitive, lazy, uninteresting. The ending and the "secret ending" are both worthless. The characters... How can you sell a game like that?

02-09-15
 Completed: Murdered - Soul Suspect  (360)
   A reaaaally good crime investigation game. I liked it at the same level as L.A. Noire. Nothing is really inovative either, but everything is well done. I highly suggest you play it.

02-07-15
 Completed: Phoenix Wright Trilogy  (3DS)
    As always, loved them. They are so much better than Appollo Justice or Dual Destinies, or the ones with Edgeworth.

01-26-15
 Completed: LoneWolf HD  (PC)
   I was - once more - disappointed. I loved the Choose your own adventure books. This one takes place after the Lone Wolf books, I believe. But the writing became terrible, and the battles are only interesting for the little QTE happening from time to time. The story is ok, not great. The hand drawn graphics are awesome, but when you switch in 3D, it just takes so much time to load....
   

[SaiKar]

Hyrule Warriors is rad. So is Grandia 2. Playing Heroes of the Storm feels like I'm in an abusive relationship, but that might be because I suck.

Fringely related: an art friend of mine was taking sketch requests one night, and I asked for a Millenia from Grandia 2 since I was playing that shortly after its release. And then he proceeded to spend, like, a week on it or something instead of the few minutes I'd expect from a sketch. He's never played the game (basically nobody's ever played the game) but he did her some resemblance of justice. Art is up at http://aquarake.tumblr.com/post/136248923805/millenia-from-grandia-2-request-done-on

[Prpl_Mage]

Neat list Donut, but how is Tales of symphonia like FFX?

Also, I get what you are saying about Deus ex and also Rings of fate.

Saikar, have you played any other games like Heroes of the storm? 'cuz Heroes of the storm is a lot more forgiving than Dota2 for example. And that's a nice sketch, there's something about those hands though.

[Archem]

Great, time for my annual list of games I beat over the past year.

January
Sly 2: Band of Thieves (100%)
Escape Goat 2
Counter Spy (in the sense that it can be beat)

February
Super Mario 3D Land (everything except the secret stage)
Gunman Clive

March
Gunman Clive 2
Mighty Switch Force
Resistance: Retribution
Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories

April
Mighty Gunvolt
Resistance 2
The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds

May
Xeodrifter
Castle of Illusion (Remake) (100%)

August
Resistance 3
Resistance: Burning Skies
Killzone: Mercenary
Uncharted: Golden Abyss

November
Halo 5

December
Box Boy (100%)

Overall, a decent year. Lots of handheld titles on the list this time around. Perhaps a few too many dry spells, especially near the end of the year. I blame Fallout 4. Just hit level 60 and still haven't set foot in Diamond City.




Oh, and Destiny at some point. I kind of forgot to write down when that happened, as I only barely considered it worth mentioning.

[SaiKar]

Saikar, have you played any other games like Heroes of the storm? 'cuz Heroes of the storm is a lot more forgiving than Dota2 for example. And that's a nice sketch, there's something about those hands though.

Yeah. It's more forgiving. Smaller hero pool to learn. No last hitting and deny crap. Games are shorter. But still, at the end, 5 people win and 5 people lose. I'm not sure I'm cut out for the type of game where I lose dozens of games consecutively before crawling up to the lofty position of a 50/50 win rate.

[Razor]

Undertale!

[Donut]

Neat list Donut, but how is Tales of symphonia like FFX?

Just to be clear, I'm speaking only in terms of story and characters. I mean a lot is similar: the pilgrimage, Colette & Yuna, Lloyd & Tidus, who the bad guy is, all the Church thing, the dad thing, etc, etc... I had the feeling I was playing the same game story-wise,  with different gameplay. I usually complain all Tales Of have similar stories/themes, but playing Symphonia was taking it further as it was giving me a feeling of copy-pasting another series. It's still a good game I guess. I did not enjoy it very much, but I agree there is a lot of work in it and if I did not play any Tales Of before or FFX, I would probably have enjoyed it.

[Prpl_Mage]

Just to be clear, I'm speaking only in terms of story and characters. I mean a lot is similar: the pilgrimage, Colette & Yuna, Lloyd & Tidus, who the bad guy is, all the Church thing, the dad thing, etc, etc... I had the feeling I was playing the same game story-wise,  with different gameplay. I usually complain all Tales Of have similar stories/themes, but playing Symphonia was taking it further as it was giving me a feeling of copy-pasting another series. It's still a good game I guess. I did not enjoy it very much, but I agree there is a lot of work in it and if I did not play any Tales Of before or FFX, I would probably have enjoyed it.

Interesting, never really thought about it like that. However I'd say that storywise they are still rather different. And lord knows the charcters are different at least. But I see the connection between Yuna and Collete being chosen for great things and how their fate is betraying them. Although I feel like that FFX had a lot more symbolism from buddhism than tales of symphonia had.

And also, while speaking about final fantasies and stories being ripped - FFXII and star wars anyone?

[Apex]

Yeah, I drew parallels between those two games when Tales of Symphonia first came out. That didn't stop me from enjoying ToS though, and once you get past the 1/3rd mark of the game, the story really deviates from Final Fantasy X.

I played too many games last year to list them all... I got just about every game that was up for Game of the Year award, and pretty much loved all of them. I'm playing through Witcher 3 right now, and loving every second of it.

I picked up 8 PS4 games during the Holidays, inFamous Second Son, Puyo Puyo Tetris, Alien Isolation, Witcher 3, Dragon Age Inquisition, Mortal Kombat X (I love the story mode in Nether Realm Studios games, they're so cheesy, yet satisfying.), Little Big Planet 3, and Tales of Zestria (Ironically not out on PS4 in Japan.).