Yes a post, hold your breath.
Anywhoo, we’re approaching the end of 2010 now (WTF) and I started to think back on what games I played this year and whatnot. I started to tweet but figured I might as well blog about it since I can have quite a good bit to say about it. So that being said…
Mass Effect 2
This game surprised me, even though I played through Mass Effect 1 and thought it was damm good and well worth its praise. I almost overlooked this series since when I got it, the 8800 series had a serious bug that would completely lock my system up but anyway.
I can’t really say anything new about this game, except what I liked about it. Garrus.
No seriously, it’s the characters. A large amount of the characters in the story are pretty well fleshed out, even the ones that come back from ME1 and as a result, the game is damm entertaining. Yes, I wanted to beat up the bad guys and whatnot but I was mostly doing missions just to see who would say what, or what loyalty mission I just unlocked. Except Jacob and Miranda’s. Man I wish Myrna Shepard wasn’t such a nice person sometimes.
Anywhoo.
Another appeal is that the game is GOOD sci-fi in my opinion; it treats physics with respect (mass effect drives is the rule-bender du jour tho), and it gets details right like no sound in space. If you bother to read the codex mostly everything’s explained, and you also find out that the game is practically built on Shout Outs.
It’s also absolutely gorgeous, and the devs know it. In the Firewalker DLC, the damm tank even mentions it at one point! The beauty of the game got kicked up a few notches with the Lair of the Shadow broker DLC as well; it actually managed to impress me despite the graphics engine starting to show its age. (why are they all crying out oil instead of tears mommy?)
If you never played it or want to see someone else play it, Shamus Young writer of Twenty Sided is starting a Let’s Play with a group of people in his 4th season of the series, Spoiler Warning. It’s funny and worth a watch if you ever knew the fun of snarking a game with a bunch of friends on the couch. As of this writing the 4th season should go up Soon(tm) due to some changes he’s making. I can’t wait.
Space Invaders: Infinity Gene
This is damm near the king of shooters. Coming from a massive Treasure fan, this is a lot.
It doesn’t lie: the game does evolve quite nicely from ye olde space invaders to a full out 3D shooter that’s reminiscent of the RayCrisis series. And I can’t get enough of it.
The graphics are simple but very elegant and gorgeous (Ultimate UFO blew my mind) and the challenge is high. Not to mention the soundtrack is awesome. Just wish it was released in the Canadian iTunes store already… >.>
I have, and finished, the iPhone and PS3 versions, and got all DLCs for both. Yes, I’m hopeless.
Soldner X2: Final Prototype
This one surprised me even more than Mass Effect 2, as I actually really didn’t like the first game. I have no idea why I bought the second on a whim but I don’t regret it at all.
Voice acting is moderate, graphics and animation are okay but it’s damm fun with a respectable difficulty curve.
It’s also got a very strong selling point; it actually has a good and balanced auto-leveling system. The game will get harder the better you play and they mean it. At low ranks it’s a pretty standard shooter but at high ranks it’s a freaking bullet hell.
The DLC adds some pretty to the game too, and interesting challenges. Well worth a look.
Final Fantasy XIV
Hoo boy.
My original plan was to start and wait until initial patching was done to start.
Uh yeah.
That didn’t happen. :x
The game is pretty damm buggy, no doubt about that. The lag, the crashes, the… well a lot. But I’m having a blast. The leve system to level up is quite nice. It’s straight-up daily quests like in WoW but it doesn’t try to be cute about it. You get so many per 36 hours, then it resets to new ones. It’s an easy way to make gil, free skill for crafting, and easy skill for classes.
Plot and such is promising, it’s showing that it’s the “CoP/WotG team” that’s doing this. I just wish we could get a do-over for the inital city; Rathe is much better suited to Limsa Lominsa but we all started in Gridania since we all thought that the plot would be like FFXI. It’s oddly solo so far, which is a nice change but I miss the epicness of fighting with a group of friends (Alexander anyone?).
It’s damm pretty. There’s no doubt about that, hell I still have holy shit moments looking around.
I think this will keep me going for a bit.
FFXI… well that’s a whole other post.
Apart from all that, the smaller games I had fun with that I remember are Flotilla, a fun little Homeworld type space RTS, Eufloria which is PLANTS GO TO WAR IN SPACE ESOTERICALLY. Guns of Icarus, tower defense on an airship, played in 1st/3rd person. There’s prolly more.
Stuff I sortof regret is Bioshock 2, it just never clicked. I finished it for the sake of finishing it. Fallout 3, which after five tries I gave up. Borderlands, but that’s mostly because I got the PS3 version. We’ll see how PC fares. I had some fun with it at least.
