As many of you experience during this festive time of year,
it can get rather busy roaming around the land visiting family and friends to
exchange gifts, eat a lot and have a hangover.
Naturally, this has affected my ability to put time aside for writing
which I’m getting around to fixing while trying to figure out what’s happening
for the upcoming New Year’s celebrations and watch the Big Fat Quiz of the Year
2014 (I know, a glamorous life I must live…)
That being said, I can’t put it all down to extenuating
circumstances as I have had the last couple days available to write; with the
intention of creating a small piece on man-made mountains and their appearance
as antagonists in games coinciding with previous posts on a similar fashion. As it is the end of the year one can find
themselves in the mind-set of ‘I’ll wait until January to start anew’ alongside
the range of resolutions many people make, so to give the above topic a proper
post alongside actually writing something, I’m going to write about some games
I liked playing this year. This isn't
going to be a quantified list as I don’t think that this will be more of a
streaming conscious than anything, but I hope you find the explanations
interesting at least. I should also say
that these games aren't all releases of 2014 but more of a retrospective on my
time spent gaming over the past 12 months.
I had briefly played this game through a number of betas, but with its entry onto Steam and Torchlight 2 elite hardcore mode getting a bit annoying to achieve I saw a chance to return to the title. I played roughly during the months of January-May and got a great deal of enjoyment from the mechanics of the game from start to finish. The skill gem system was a totally new experience for me, as I naturally built up an array of spells, abilities and auras to use across my cohort of exiles in a number of different ways. This was further expanded through links and augments that mutated said skills to explode, split, fear, stun and more to the point where a skill could look considerably different on use. The bartering system was enjoyable to partake in as well, as I didn't look up guides for it and naturally experimented with items to see what would come of them. If I was to level a complaint, I’d say that the armour sets felt a little bit too samey during my playtime (which could be down to the aesthetic choice of the exile environment) but regardless it was a really enjoyable free to play game that doesn't look to nickel-and-dime you to have an enjoyable experience.
One of my first posts was about this title and since then I haven’t gone back
to it. Now I've had time to look back on
it I can say I still hold the idea that it’s an enjoyable game and would be
great if it wasn't so repetitive in the gameplay through the mission board
system. The big events grabbed me
alongside the smaller ones that scattered the landscape and if it focused more
on these akin to something like Guild Wars 2 I feel like it would have kept my
interest for much longer. That being
said, it was a game that was developed for a very long time and maybe it was
never going to truly work as they had envisaged. To end on a good point thou, getting around
the environment was really fun especially the glider / kite system.
This game came out in October 2013 but I didn't pick it up until the
Summer sale of this year which by then was in its finished state with all
episodes available of season one. I had
briefly played Telltale’s The Walking Dead on my phone in the spring and liked
my first try of a visual text-adventure (I’m not 100% of its genre but that’s a
close approximation) so as it was cheap I thought I’d give this one a go. I instantly played through episode one and
loved the gameplay, playing through the rest of it over a period of a week in
the late evenings so that I wouldn't be disturbed. I wanted to figure out where each fable came
from and what sort of life they were living, alongside the possible outcomes of
my actions as Bigby Wolf. I tried to
answer dialog options how I think I would act in the situations presented
alongside remembering to use the ‘silence is an option’ mechanic from time to
time. Alongside the gameplay, I really
love the aesthetics of the Wolf Among Us particularly in the options menu and
title/credits of each episode. The
running title of Bibgy walking through the streets of New York with its purples
blues and blacks looks brilliant and a particular frame of this became my pc
wallpaper from July to October of this year.
This game may not have the direct human connection of the previous
Walking Dead for some, but for me the Wolf Among Us was a greatly enjoyable
experience for me that have me more open to narrative games in the future.
Game of the
Year 420 BLAZE IT
This year I’ve looked to try new games whenever possible to try and broaden my horizons in the medium. Sometimes I end up in some weird places and this is one of them. I won’t put an image up, but just download it and embrace the crazy that this is.
This year I’ve looked to try new games whenever possible to try and broaden my horizons in the medium. Sometimes I end up in some weird places and this is one of them. I won’t put an image up, but just download it and embrace the crazy that this is.
I originally bought Civ V on release and got a lot of enjoyment from it; harking back to the series’ second installment I use to play on the PlayStation as a much younger self. That being said, picking up Brave New World during the summer sale filled me with renewed interest in the game. The addition of trade routes, religion (I skipped Gods and Kings), spies, ideologies and the revamped cultural victory added so much depth for my play style as I prefer to go for non-combatant victory conditions. Recently, I’ve got more and more interested in the finer details as I attempt to play on the higher difficulties of immortal / deity and I’m not being put off by the losses. There are 4x’s that are much more in-depth, but Civ (like many others) has that personal connection and I hope that this series continues to remain strong into the future.
Very few games have made me genuinely laugh in my life, but the Stanley Parable’s standalone release this year was brilliant in being mundane on the surface but hilarious underneath. I played the earlier source mod for this during my time at university thanks to it being featured on Extra Credits “games you may not have tried” many times, but the recent release added a bunch of new possible ‘endings’ to the parable. To those who aren’t aware, it’s a first-person narrative-driven game where a narrator takes you through a story. What that story maybe, is pretty much up to you and I hope more people get to experience this fascinating and enjoyable experience.
I've played this for around two years and this year it’s clocked up
a sizeable amount of my time gaming, but somehow Warframe remains to be a game
I enjoy playing nearly every day. Being involved
in the game for this length of time, it’s great to see how far they've come from
when I started playing; from around 6 game modes to 20 with improvements to the
former as a means to continue to make the experience varied. Alongside being my most played game this year,
it is also a free to play title that allows the player to decide what level of
investment they want to take. Like I’ve
mentioned in previous posts, as its free give it a try and you may enjoy what
you see.
Although I did dismiss the list idea at the beginning of this post, if I was to
quantify the games I played this year Transistor would probably take the top
spot. This has been the only game since
Skyrim that I’ve bought on release and I completed it in two short bursts of
playtime; but the time I had with this game was both an aesthetically wonderful
game and narratively fascinating experience.
On the surface, Transistor follows Super Giant Games previous title
(Bastion) in terms of the narrative progression of an isometric combat game
where a smooth-voiced narrator takes you through the world. Upon playing Transistor, you can see how the
combat has some more dynamic rpg-like mechanics and through this get a greater
understanding to people who exist in this world. Even thou I’ll admit I’m not 100% sure on the
story; the journey itself was interesting enough to keep me wanting to find out
more with some particular sections of the game getting a genuine response from
me. With all that being said, it is
backed up by an amazing soundtrack which features a mixture of slow beats,
calming melodies, high-octane melees and chilling songs; in particular The
Spine and Smoke Signals somewhat fall into this last category in my
opinion. I’m looking to play through the
game again next month and I know it’ll draw me back in.
To bring this all to a somewhat conclusion, I think that
2014 has been a year for me where narrative driven games have raised higher up
on my interest level. I briefly talked
about my shift of gaming habits in the ‘monogaming vs. polygaming’ post but my
general media habits have changed quite a bit.
These days I watch very little TV or films because I don’t feel invested
in the story or potential plot. What these
narrative games have given me is a way to enjoy stories in a medium which I
feel has the potential to go further than is conceived generally. I hope that going into 2015, I get to enjoy a
larger mix of narratives in games and in turn find some interesting connections
to architecture that I can write about.
Other than that, have a great New Year’s and amazing 2015.
