Making games and taking names @manchestergamemaker - Tumblr Blog

Watch the first minute and a half of this. Have a laugh! It’s okay to laugh! It’s pretty painful to watch. You’re getting a glimpse into how it feels to be a game designer watching playtesters.

So we all on the same page? Alright. So there has been a lot of discussion about this video online and I’ve been spouting off thoughts on twitter and I feel like I have enough to put them all down in one place. First, the boring one for me.

Don’t Games Journalists need to be Good at Games?

No. Absolutely not. “But if someone was bad at understanding movies or only watched kids movies, would you want them to review stuff?” Not the same thing. It’d be like saying only people who played in the NFL could comment on and critique NFL play. Which some people say, but most people agree is stupid. Knowledge and expertise do not necessarily imply skill. Also the consumer of game reviews are not necessarily great videogame players. For the average gamer, the opinion of an expert is just as far from their perspective as a poor player. Even with levels of play THIS poor, it’s important to remember that Platformer skill is a niche skill these days and nothing I’ve heard indicated that the player wrote a review or anything based off this. A journalist was just bad at a game. If you made me say, play a moba or a console FPS, I’d look like a jackass too, probably. Maybe not as much of one, but still. Maybe you don’t want someone who’s bad at a genre to review a genre (unless that’s the point of the review) but that isn’t the discussion people are having.

Not only is it okay, it’s BENEFICIAL. If every reviewer was good at games, whole areas of concern and accessibility would go completely unaddressed. More voices give more variety and more insight. You can argue about how those voices are used or w/e but they should absolutely exist. It’d be like saying ‘only great players should test games’ which is obviously absurd.

On Testing, and on the Game Design Perspective

So while everyone on twitter was burying this guy for being awful, pretty much every game designer I knew who was talking about it was like “okay but how do we make the TUTORIAL better???”. A lot of non-devs were like “WTH???” because to them it was like “Look this guy is CLEARLY bad and clueless it’s not the game’s fault.”

First things first. Even a complete knucklehead can teach you about your game. Bad players can teach you TONS of stuff. You might be like “Well why fix something to help people through who won’t be good at the game anyways?” because yeah, perhaps this guy wouldn’t be able to get far. But improving things like how the tutorial works improves things in little nice ways for everyone.

So what’s wrong with this tutorial?

It’s mixing elements really quickly. You have a dash you haven’t been asked to use yet and you have to jump, dash, and do so off a rock that isn’t a part of this section but is an obstacle for the last. Also you gotta do this pretty strictly at the peak of your jump. Some people made fun of him dashing into the pillar over and over again but in tons of games that’s actually WHAT YOU DO. Dash into things to break them!

Now most experienced players can figure this out, but if you can make things nice and clean… if it doesn’t take that much more effort, why -wouldn’t- you do it? Some people protested like “Well, it’s not fair to make devs compromise their creative vision for bad players!” Lets ignore the fact that, like I said, most devs were already all about how to make this better, who’s CREATIVE VISION involves a really quick tutorial segment? “JUMPING OFF THE ROCK IS FOUNDATIONAL TO THE MESSAGE OF THE GAME!” I’ll just tell you right now, I don’t know the Cuphead guys and I don’t know if it’ll be different in the final version, but I can tell you it’s not an important part of their vision. But what if it was?

Working on BEP I used to have real old school castlevania jumps. No air control at all. But then I had some friends test it who aren’t that great a platformers. One of them I saw struggling to jump up on things. They’d neutral jump and then try and press forward to get on platforms. And they’d do this over and over again. Pressing forward and jump at the same time from a stand still didn’t come naturally to some players. Walking to and jumping over a pit, sure no problem, but it screwed up their vertical platforming.

Obviously I didn’t want to compromise my vision for my own game but sometimes you gotta ask yourself “What IS your vision?” Was my vision “No jump control?” No. but I definitely wanted a jump that had weight and commitment behind it. I didn’t want the player to be nimble in the air. I wanted a slow, deliberate game. So I built up a jump to fit my needs. I gave the player a strong neutral jump – one where they could change to a forward or a backward jump arc at any time. Which was fun for dealing with projectiles. Then then for the normal jumps, I gave the ability to slow down or speed up a little. Jumps felt like braking while driving a heavy truck. The jump had character, but also fit my goals and ALSO fixed a lot of problems players had. So did I compromise my vision? No, I got a clearer understanding of my vision and executed it. Those changes also allowed for more challenging gameplay in later parts of the game so changing things for accessibility strengthened my vision and benefitted hardcore players in the end.

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Top Best and Worst Games of 2016

I’ve wanted to do one of these for quite some time, so this year I’ll actually nail it out! It’s time for the list of top games I played in 2016, some honorable mentions, and the worst games I also played in 2016.

I feel it’s important to look at all sides, why did the worst games stand out so much? What about them makes me not enjoy them? These are the little things I like to think about, and without further delay, I’m going to launch directly into the honorable mentions to kick things off!

AS A FAIR WARNING! There will be possible minor spoilers delving into game mechanics, ideas, and story in some of these posts. So read each at your own risk!

HONORABLE MENTIONS (IN NO ORDER):

Salt & Sanctuary

I’ve always had a mad appreciation for Ska Studios, dating to way far back before they were even called that with the original Zombie Smasher. Once again, the husband and wife team has nailed something truly fun and special, albeit with a few snags and issues. The game’s pacing is pretty strange, and there are often difficulty spikes and extreme valleys rather than a steady curve. However, the game earns tons of bonus points by featuring the duo’s trademark art style and weird semi lo-fi backing guitars in the soundtrack make for a wholly unique experience even if it’s not quite everyone’s bag.

To achieve something so true to Dark Soulsian nature and apply it in such a different way with a more open Metroid style progression is quite tough, and the map is actually quite massive and full of variety. Players may get quite lost as there’s no actual map to open, and the game sadly is lacking in notable landmarking to keep people on track, but these minor flaws only detract slightly from what’s easily a diamond in the rough.

With maybe a couple more month’s dev time to iron out the pacing and difficulty curve, Salt & Sanctuary could have easily been in my top games. As it stands, it just BARELY misses out, but stands on it’s own regardless with it’s bizarre world, sometimes rewarding combat system, and surprisingly diverse character customization it is most certainly worth the time of fans deep into the Fromsoft Souls style of gameplay and possibly worth a glance for fans of Metroid, action games with slower but heavier hitting combat, or people just looking for something trying things a little bit different!

Journey

This is something I didn’t even think would make it on here when I first booted it up, I’d had this game for free on my PS4 due to one of the free with Plus events. I’d seen tidbits and snippets, but had always dismissed it as a kind of walking simulator type deal, albeit a gorgeous one.

What I didn’t know, is that the game has an online component that will sometimes pair you up with a random person. What took me so by surprise with this, and made it a fascinating experience was simply NOT knowing. For quite a bit of the game, I explored a sprawling, beautiful desert wasteland, charming strange carpet cloth creatures and absorbing the atmosphere when I ran across another person that looked like me. Initially, I passed it off as finding another creature in the world with a solid AI that follows you around repeating actions you do or doing it’s own thing, so I pressed forward until my power went out.

I didn’t boot the game up for a few days, but when I did I continued the journey, running across a couple more of those “solid AIs” until I reached a puzzle I was missing something on. Then it clicked, I saw the other person start solving it and ended up playing the rest of the game with this person, watching them react and stop as we eventually reached a snowy peak and were nearly torn limb from limb by huge stone beasts. Both of us ducking and hiding from a massive wind and patiently waiting for eachother before progressing. It’s an experience quite unlike any other I’ve had, and the game so seemlessly places you into other player’s worlds and them into your’s, the game also has quite a few hidden secrets and things to find and while I didn’t get many of them I could easily see the replayability.

By all intents and purposes, this should be a top game, but much like S&S it’s missing some things that sink it just a bit lower. While gorgeous and wonderfully scored, the core component of the game really does feel like a giant meandering wander. It’s not directionless, at the very start you’re shown exactly what you’re heading towards, but it’s easy to space out and just sing at random junk trying to find stuff to make other stuff happen. This game certainly isn’t for everyone, but it’s 100% worthy of the praise it has garnered throughout the last handful of years for doing things just a bit differently!

Owlboy

For the longest time, I’d been convinced Owlboy was vaporware. Yet, it continued to pop up, time and time again, an improved art style here, a new thing there, and against all the odds after 9 long years, it released.

So how does it hold up? Well, it certainly feels like a game that spent 9 years refining a beautiful world, art style, and sweeping score to match it’s scenes, and about 2-3 refining the gameplay. Owlboy is far from a bad game, in fact it’s quite good! It does, however, suffer from very Nintendo-esque meets modern design and the result is a game that occasionally shines so brightly only to collapse into itself moments later, leaving a somewhat sizeable hole in the experience.

The developers themselves have mentioned that along the way they cut loose roughly 50% of the game’s content, of how much was finished I’m not sure. While I’m sure they had their reasons, I actually feel it loses a bit of itself and lacks in a cohesive experience, especially in party member usage and management. Otis, the protagonist, will eventually meet up with and utilize 3 partners in his journey, each with their own unique gimmick and usage. One is your all arounder, able to fight enemies from distances. Another, the bruiser, capable of short range powerful blasts and flames to burn away debris. The final one is a spider type, slinging web balls that let you stun enemies and also web strings to dart around the screen, he plays amazingly!

You get to use this final character for about 1 to 2 hours in the game by the time you reach him, and it’s extremely upsetting. The game also feels like it has a GIANT gap where a dungeon initially should’ve gone or a full area to utilize all 3 of your partners and this never happens. In fact, one of the latter game dungeons actually sees you LOSING a party member and you never get the satisfaction of working together with all 3 characters unless you putz around after beating the game trying to find all the hidden treasures. The game just doesn’t take advantage of it’s cast fully, despite being full of warm, loveable characters and some excellently written dialogue from time to time. Furthermore, while not every game needs difficulty to be good, Owlboy feels very safe in it’s design choices and never quite challenges players in ways that it could which makes for a somewhat flat experience.

It’s a giant shame, and while I agree with cutting pieces of the game that didn’t quite fit, it feels very much like the game is a giant Jigsaw puzzle, one that took 9 years to solve with a very intricate picture, but some pieces depicting odd bits have just been outright removed and your imagination can’t help but run wild at the could have beens.

Copy Kitty

Another game I feel like I’ve been tracking since dinosaurs roamed the earth, this game is an absolute stellar blast of a game. In fact it SHOULD be on my top games I played, and would be, it’s just that it’s currently in early access, awaiting it’s final chapters to complete the game.

Otherwise, I could just gush about this game in general. It feels like a long lost Dreamcast or early PS2 game visually, and while it absolutely does not screenshot well, it plays like a dream and the visuals are actually quite charming. Musically I don’t remember much, but that’s not a big deal as the core of this game feels like a Treasure game that’s been lost to the ages. Copy Kitty features one of the most wild systems I’ve seen in quite some time, mixing a simple melee attack with a metric boatload of copy abilities.

Three abilities can be held at once, and when a secondary fire button is pressed, it mixes all of them together creating all manner of insane effects. Uppercutting fire tornados? Sure! Homing shuriken bombs? Nailed it! Chemically expanding potion alchemy? You got it buddy! There’s never a dull moment in Copy Kitty, and the true insanity is that there’s a staggering number of abilities to be found and utilized, often taking the approach that certain worlds and stages will have a theme to ease you into how each type works. The stage by stage format just works, with stages lasting no more than a couple minutes a pop and to double the deal, there’s an unlockable hard mode that pushes the skills you’ve learned to the very limit, not to mention completely remixing enemies, changing entire stage designs, and giving the game’s wild boss battles a host of new abilities and more!

We’re not even done yet, not only is there the main game, there’s side challenges, unlockable modifiers such as the ability to ONLY use a sword or melee type skills, and a whole second character. Yes, there’s an entire second character that plays entirely different, using options or minion style play that somehow manages to make even the levels on normal still feel like a totally fresh experience. Copy Kitty is a tremendous gem that deserves every bit of support from longtime action game enthusiasts, and while it’s an honorable mention this year, will most likely easily make my top games of 2017 list by the end of this one!

Let it Die

You make fast friends with a skateboarding skeleton named Uncle Death, he proceeds to bestow the title of senpai upon you before boarding away. He has an odd accent. You begin wandering forward, eventually feeding a mushroom to a zebra striped lady who vomits sparkles and then vanishes without a trace. You fight a bad guy, you slowly realize this game is just a free-to-play Baroque for the modern era with a Grasshopper Manufacturer approach to characters and it’s a blast!

I can’t quite describe Let it Die’s weird charm, and was actually expecting to not dig this game so much. Grasshopper Manufacturer has been one bumpy road of games, and while I enjoy Shadows of the Damned more than most, I can’t say the same for Lollipop Chainsaw or Killer is Dead. For quite some time even, I was unsure if they’d ever hit that stride they slid into during the era of Killer 7 and No More Heroes and was wholly convinced Let it Die was going to be some kind of odd, dull pit brawler. News about the game prior to it’s release was scarce, and even two or so months before it’s launch I had no idea what it was, just that it would end up being an F2P game.

Enter that bizarre introduction above, and soon past that you’ll meet even stranger characters like a strange space suit Hitler looking guy who’s oddly polite and will make you weapons, a dude that gives you tips from his hat while he viciously plays a fighting game, and a robot that wants you to go raid other player’s camps that is also eerily polite. That’s not even everyone either, and while the game’s cast is colorful it doesn’t even hold a candle to the actual meat of the game.

Soon enough, you’ll be forced into clawing your way up the game’s Tower of Barbs, a mysterious labyrinth built out of stapled together areas after the Earth suffers a massive tectonic shift. Generally, you’ll be fighting tooth and nail for survival early on, occasionally running into a corpse of your former self should you die, or even your friend’s corpses, these are called Haters. Defeating them will either return them to your freezer if they’re your’s, or special energy if they’re someone else’s. Wildly, it just works, despite being a super tough game I’ve never once had to drop money into the system to progress and you fall quickly into a groove of climbing up high, snagging a load of materials and returning them to your box so your R&D buddy can make you stronger and better weapons for the trek back up. It’s all so very self contained, and the floors shift each time you return to them, making the experience semi rogue-like in nature without being too wild with it.

The only thing stopping me from throwing this neato game higher is I’ve simply not gotten too far into it myself yet. There’s quite a few tales of the game going from a tough but doable incline to impassable mountain of difficulty, making the endgame a money gobbling arcade-ish slog. Not that I’d mind sinking a bit of cash into the game at some point to support it, but it does seem to follow a pretty standard F2P pay-to-win model, and that would be enough to tarnish it a bit. Also, the game’s patching system seems a bit strange, doubling the game in size early on to fix a falling through the floor bug rubbed quite a few people the wrong way, and while it doesn’t bother me your mileage may vary if you have one of the smaller hard drives in your PS4. Regardless, the game is free and if you have the time and space, give the thing a look, it’s a trip!

TOP GAMES I PLAYED IN 2016 (IN NO ORDER):

Dark Souls 3

I can’t believe it’s already been around 9+ months since this came out, and despite a somewhat bumpy reception resulting in people not being able to agree upon what they want from a Souls game, this one still makes my list.

What keeps it fresh in my mind is just a general, level-headed focus. It’s not the insane experimentation that was Demon’s Souls or the wildly connected and fresh world design of the first Dark Souls. It’s also not the fumble that was Dark Souls 2’s linear and focused design, full of uninspired enemies and countless bosses that I can’t be bothered to remember outside of the game’s precious few interesting DLC fights. It’s an odd progression, one that mixes elements of all 3 of these games into one mega package, and it just works so wonderfully for me.

The combat is easily the tightest, gone is the wild clunky swinging from the previous entries and in it’s place is a slightly closer to Bloodborne melee that plays at a mid pace. I’ve finished this game twice, swapping around weapons on one build and eventually conquering the game using only fist based weapons on another, and despite some weird questionable hitboxes, it all felt so natural. It’s far easier to pick up and use a weapon of your choice most of the time as well, and while there’s still a few stinkers I actually feel with enough time that people could easily utilize any build or spell set to get through the game which is previously not something I felt playing through Fromsoft’s other Soulsborne type games.

Enemy and boss design is also more focused, there’s just enough bosses in the game to spread variety throughout each, and while a few are gimmick laden weakpoint targetting deals it helps to bust up the monotony that Dark Souls 2 suffered in it’s bland and uninspired rush of similar fights. The non-gimmick oriented ones are some of the best the series has to offer, including a teleporting boss that tells it’s attack right before the moment of teleportation, making for a desperate and exciting battle of reading the situation (and somehow providing a teleporting boss that doesn’t suck, leave it to Fromsoft I guess) another fight features an opponent that’s almost a test of what you know from fighting all the other enemy types and PVP invaders, and while it may not be the most creative, it’s an extremely satisfying fit for a series known to try so many odd things.

The only hit I can say DaS3 takes is that the world-building feels slightly strange this time, it’s a little more open than say DaS2 but there’s still a handful of gated off areas until X or Y thing is achieved and connectivity still isn’t as on point as it was in the first DaS. There’s a solid plot hidden under the game’s pile of lore and strangely surreal world, but it feels just a tiny bit lost at the moment and I have to wonder if the upcoming final DLC for this franchise will finally shed the last lights we need to close out the series. Regardless of the tiny issues, this game is a fantastic refinement of an era of From Software, one that gripped and captivated the world over in ways that I dont think many foresaw and for that reason I gotta say this is one of my top games of 2016. Thank you From Software, and thank you Soulsborne titles for one hell of a ride through an era laden with cinematic fluff dominating most of the major gaming market, here’s to the future!

Furi

Man, what can I even say about the game, despite being a very one and done feeling experience I can’t help but mark this on the list. It does what it does so very well!

Furi is a game with a very unique aesthetic, and full of a bizarrely all star cast of talent. The artist behind Afro Samurai, a few prolific synth-wave composers like Carpenter Brut, and a team of ex Ubi-Soft devs banded together to create what’s essentially a boss rush battler with a driven narrative. It just works somehow.

You’re given a small set of tools right out the gate and taught to use them in the game’s first boss against a bizarre man with 3 faces. You have a gun for shooting, the ability to charge up a shot, melee, parry, and dodge. The fight against this first boss, “The Chain” serves as a tutorial and the wonderful thing is almost every boss plays HEAVILY into all these mechanics, but in entirely different ways. It’s a game you’ll spend much of your first playthrough learning what each does, and desperately struggling to push into that next phase to learn all over again, yet it never feels punishing or hard enough to be unfair.

Between each boss is a nice long walk through set pieces while the story plays out between our hero (or anti-hero, pending on how you look at the story) and the bunny man that’s guiding you towards The Jailer, someone who supposedly imprisoned you for as of yet unknown reasons. In any other game like this, these scenes would be extremely out of place, but here they serve as a break from the exhausting boss fights. Despite being totally fair in it’s approach, Furi’s bosses take some time to get through, often taking 10-15 minutes per fight and that’s just on the normal difficulty as I never had the time I wanted to do hard mode.

10-15 minutes may sound like a ton for a boss, but they all fight wildly different. Without spoiling too much, for one fight you may be plinking away at an enemy’s barrier to get to the center and initiate a duel to push into the next phase, all while dodging intricate bullet patterns not dissimilar of early manic shmups or danmaku. The very next fight you’ll be tossed around by a melee juggernaut in a suit of armor, attempting to work out the timing to get in and deal your damage. Later, you might be pursuing a sniper in a massive arena playing a huge game of cat and mouse with you. It’s these little things that make Furi stand out, you’ll never fight the same style of boss twice and every fight stands out as it’s own strange behemoth that you’ll almost always feel great about when you finally fell them.

Furi comes as a must play recommendation to action game enthusiasts all over, and while the experience is short it certainly doesn’t overstay it’s welcome. While some might find the lack of stage design, enemies, or anything a bit offputting, I appreciate it as a pretty fresh experience. The idea of a boss rusher isn’t new, but this is certainly a new way to handle it and for that Furi’s one of my top games from 2016.

DOOM 2016

I mean, it just nailed FPS. It may be a bit more Serious Sam than it is DOOM but that is certainly not a bad thing at all. It also has a sexy map interface and these weird little snippets that feel almost Metroid Prime-ish, and a great visual style that lies between graphic novel and hellscape.

I don’t think many of us expected the game to do as well as it did, the multiplayer beta left everyone ho-humming for a good few weeks and nobody quite knew what the main game was gonna be like despite some very scripted E3 footage that was a year old at that point. Instead, we’re greeted within the first 15 minute of Imp face smashing, Doom Guy tossing robot plot man aside, and a viciously brutal battle with a ton of imps followed by a romp across Mars, all to the most absurdly pulse pounding soundtrack possibly ever created for a game.

Gone is the era of cover fire shooters with plodding narratives, everything in this game is a delicate dance of weakening your enemies enough and initiating a quick kill to keep your health up, and it feels incredible. Somehow in the 10 or so hours the main game took, I never got tired of this as the game keeps introducing new threats. Each is extremely aggressive, but feels different enough to constantly keep you aware of what’s happening around you lest you get decimated, and while the game is at a primal level of absurd violence, the odd gore shower doesn’t feel out of place or too extreme like it does in any given God of War game or hyper violent silly game barring that Splatterhouse reboot everyone’s already forgotten about. It also doesn’t take itself too seriously, there’s a plot that’s bonkers but it’s reeled in just enough to make me care about what Doom Guy’s all about (called the Doomslayer in this game) and there’s a fair bit of humor as well, featuring fist bumping figurines of yourself and a good old thumbs up should you accidentally sling yourself into a hot vat of molten liquid.

Did I also mention the soundtrack? Let me do it one more time, I’m no fan of the djent guitar style but somehow Mick Gordon was able to craft it into something that fits. It’s music to grit your teeth to and rip and tear the demons apart with, and it dynamically builds and fits, slowly easing you wave from wave until the bone-crushing riffs (and occasionally pounding electronic stuff) hits in full swing and you know it’s do or die. The moment the song BFG Division first kicks in in full in game is about as powerful as hearing that iconic E1M1 from the original Doom for me, just a powerful smashing riff with a driving electronic rhythm that sounds like some kind of demon screaming, if you didn’t know Doom was back before that moment, you sure will when you’re bashing up your first Mancubus to that.

DOOM is by far the biggest surprise of 2016, I don’t really think anyone thought we’d see a proper FPS revival, or even that it’d go on to win a soundtrack award from a few different outlets (which is more a huge triumphant feeling for me seeing metal get the spotlight for just once) and I certaintly don’t think anyone foresaw it being as viciously fun as it was. I can only hope that with a cliffhanger ending it means we’ll see a proper sequel or stand-alone expansion a-la their Wolfenstein reboot a few years back. Only time will tell, but having DOOM to stay this time around would be tremendous.

Kirby: Planet Robobot

I often complain about games needing to innovate, yet one series that always seems to do just fine pulling off the same old same old is Kirby.

Planet Robobot is no different, while it offers an awesome new robot with it’s own crazy abilities, it’s really just the third game on the Returns to Dreamland engine. However, much like Dark Souls 3 it feels like a final refinement of that engine, featuring some rock solid stage design, some really over the top bosses and some brilliant callbacks to older Kirby games that really ties the small universe it’s in together and makes it feel so much larger.

It’s a pretty typical Kirby affair, you’ll be running through the stages dealing with it’s various gimmicks and playing with your powers to find hidden objects that open more bonus levels should you find them all. All to a wild and bubbly soundtrack that occasionally delves into a wilder technologically oriented one when it needs to. The series’ iconic style is in play visually and there are quite a few amazing spectacles visually going on in the background sometime, though the game certainly has issues if you’re playing in 3D on an older 3DS model, even the New 3DS XL had some chug moments and you can really tell Nintendo pushed the hardware to it’s absolute limit to make the thing work.

Sakurai and his team poured some heavy love into this game, and the final reference harkens back to the days of Kirby Superstar and the villians feel colorful despite having Nintendo syndrome. It might not be amazing or have deep implications, but it’s appreciated and it shows that Kirby is something they’re extremely passionate about. Not only this, but if you do want to read, each boss has it’s own little texts in the menues that bring the story to life and, weirdly, climaxes in a rather hyper depressing implication of what goes down with the villian.

If you don’t like Kirby or Nintendo games, this probably won’t change your mind, but for those that do or even have an interest in just good solid design and enjoyable gameplay I honestly can’t recommend this enough. Kirby’s at his finest in this outing and I’d easily say the title is on par with and surpasses even the best entries in the series!

Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst

The first game on this list that I played in 2016, but didn’t actually release in 2016. This game is old, archaic, clunky, hyper repetetive, and I love every minute of it.

There’s something to be said about Sega during the Dreamcast era, and even up through the modern era of games. They simply did not care what kind of games they made and always strived to make weird things work, people spent thousands of hours playing this game online, offline, in all manner of ways back in the day and I certainly missed out on a golden era of gaming by not having the chance to try it til now.

The first thing that stands out is, for it’s age, the game has a unique visual presentation. Monsters feel very different from one another despite having occasionally similar fighting techniques. Each area has a lot of loving attention to detail, for the time. It just exudes a classic level of charm that people tend to miss out on in huge modern games. It won’t win any awards for a plot, but it excels at world-building and by the end of episode 1, 2, and 4 you’ll be at least somewhat interested in what a strange planet Ragol is.

I ended up running with a human hunter for the duration of my play time so far, knocking out all 3 included episodes on normal as well as episode 1 on hard. Most of my time was spent in co-op, and the crux of the combat revolves around carefully timed button hits to land 3 hit combos, or careful TP management to keep yourself healed and your enemies damaged from ranged distances (you can also use gun weapons for this!) but what stands it out is how enemies behave and fight. There’s a few similar ones but there’s almost always some different way to fight them, whether it’s stealthing robots that try to get behind you or massive flying birds that swoop in circles making them a tough target there’s a level of variety that’s lacking in modern MMOs and even modern RPGs in general that make it so memorable.

That’s just the cake itself, the icing comes in the form of the boss battles which are all some level of desperate struggle with their own unique mechanics. Whether it’s facing your first De Rol Le on a tiny raft as it chases from the front, side, and behind attempting to bombard you with explosive barbs of some kind and it’s massive tendrils when it latches to your boat, or the absolutely stunning conclusion to episode 2 that has you fighting a creature known as Olga Flow while it tries desperately to attack you with beams and a colossal sword while falling upside down an elevator shaft, eventually leading to a massive arena where you must utilize constantly changing terrain to avoid it’s massive energy blasts. It’s simple, but the game utilizes it’s set pieces well and also provides gameplay that can only be achieved by using them. You genuinely feel like you’re taking part in these huge desperate struggles, and you never feel like a boring ant thwacking a giant HP sponge.

PSO is extremely charming, and I’ve even picked up Episode 3 and PSU after playing this to play solo even. It’s no hidden secret I’ve always been a Sega fan, and playing PSO was a reminder of why. Also the game’s OST is stellar, any of the IDOLA tracks stand out and I’m fairly sure I’ll never get the chord hits from “Have the Immortal Feather” out of my head or the bizarre shifting melody line in “Have the Divine Blade” on top of the odd almost native american instruments creeping in through the sci-fi soundscape style. There’s also a tremendous amount of callbacks to classic Phantasy Star songs, and arrangements that make even awful songs from Phantasy Star 3 sound absurdly fresh and organic.

Overall, PSO’s from an era of games that has come and gone, but I’m so glad I was able to experience it before it vanishes forever should the private servers ever shut down. If you’ve never tried the game, give it a spin on a private server sometime, it’s not the best playing game ever, but it doesn’t have to be to achieve what it wants.

King’s Field 1-3

From Software’s been making Dark Souls a lot longer than you might think, stemming all the way back to these wonderfully archaic gems known as King’s Field.

They are some of the most obscenely clumsy feeling games out there, but much like PSO above, it has a heart of gold and exploring the bizarre world from a mailing software company’s first few games just feels insane.

I included all 3 of the titles from this series on the list, as it feels like a complete package moving from the first to the third game. All of them are dirt simple, and look like dirt too but it actually triggers those deep imagination reflexes for better or worse and somehow it benefits for it. Often you’ll spend hours lost, looking for that single thing you missed behind a hidden wall possibly or that an enemy might be clutching somewhere and it’ll hit you that you hadn’t tried this thing or that and suddenly you feel a sense of satisfaction that’s sorely lacking in today’s games.

Combat itself as well as exploration is bog standard, you turn like you’re in molasses, and you have to use buttons to look slightly up or down to aim at things. Feedback is sorely lacking, but when you get it you’ll notice a nice enemy flinch to indicate you’re doing work, and what work you’ll do. Both magic and melee level up seperately from eachother, promoting usage of both to turn whichever protagonist you’re controlling into a roaming death machine, but it takes a lot of time and investment.

The differences between the 3 games are mostly minimal, but each offers something worthy of playing. The first game is by far the worst of the bunch, but maybe the most oddly charming, everything kinda jitters around and I’m pretty sure the game’s made of like, 20 stapled together polygons for any given monster, but it has some moonlogic puzzles that I just cannot help but love for going so outside the box and yet making a decent chunk of sense in the end. What it does differently is presenting a very linear progression, a world closed off that has you stuffed into a graveyard that only expands deeper and deeper. Sadly, this one was never released in the states though it’s fairly easy to come across translations for it online.

King’s Field 2 really ups the ante, and is tied for 3 as my favorite. Almost immediately you can split off to different paths and explore a much wider open world, discovering the mystery of an island plagued by a pretty angry god dragon thing, Souls fans will recognize a few of the names tossed around as well and while they’re nothing more than reference, it’s hard not to try and splice them all together. KF2 is better than the first in every conceivable way, but the lack of focus on a linear progression does mean it’s far easier to get lost, I played the vast majority of KF1, 2, and 3 without guides so there were many instances of hitting brick walls and just needing to give it a rest and return for that A-HA moment.

King’s Field 3 is huge. So much so that I actually kind of disliked it at first, it also ditches the plinky midi bass Seinfeld ambience from the previous games and goes a bit more JRPG in portions. It’s a little more forgettable, but there’s a few real solid tracks. Besides that, the game’s huge, I mean freakishly so to the point I’d actually call the thing the real Souls 0. Even with maps, you’re going to spend quite a lot of time trekking back and forth between areas trying all manner of things and inventory jenga to just make that little bit of progress that’s needed. But what the game lacks in cohesive progression, it makes up for in a cohesive world. NPCs have their own little subplots in a lot of cases now, and you can see that deeply rooted work and world-building From Software became known for slowly taking shape. It’d be countless years before they’d perfect it, but looking back at King’s Field 3 it’s hard not to admire the ambition of the game, even if they ruined the hell out of magic and made melee even harder!

It takes a special kind of person to enjoy this franchise, but if you’re bold enough to step into the deeper realms of archaic gaming and want a unique experience, all three of these come recommended. Just make sure you bring a sharp memory or possibly a notepad to jot down all the stuff you need to remember.

Pharoah Rebirth+

Pure charm, this game’s an indie with a heart and charming characters. It’s not the hardest game, or even the greatest game but it does what it does well which is a stage by stage exploration platformer with a distinct style.

I really don’t have too many words to blow on this one despite thinking so highly of it, but what it reminds me the most of is the simpler era of indie. Despite the ambitious art style, it seems to focus a lot more on focusing in and achieving a handful of things and doing them well. Albeit, there’s some truly annoying bits if you’re shooting for 100% it’s all very worth it in the end cause it feels quite like an indie game you may have played back in the mid 2000s.

The gameplay is often built around exploring a level as one of two characters, occasionally changing up to break monotony, oddly, the game was initially conceived as a monthly episodic game for an indie game magazine publication in Japan (I think at least, from what I read). From month to month an episode would come out and try different things to keep players playing til the end, and it quite honestly feels that way sometimes, but not in a bad way. It’s an idea that could only come to life in the realm of indie games, and it’s aided by the fact it feels like the creator had time between each act of the game to think of how the characters would interact with eachother. Despite being a 2D platformery deal, it has some charming dialogue that helps the characters be more than just one offs.

That’s really all there is to say about it, just give the game a look on Steam and if you like how it’s presented give it a whirl!

Creepy Castle

Don’t let the simple, ZX Spectrumish art style fool you. Behind all the filters, there’s a really solid game that feels like an odd blend of Wario-Ware meets 2D RPG exploration game.

What stands it out isn’t the gameplay really, or even the oddball battle system, it’s the fact that the game feels almost like Kirby Superstar. Once you finish the Creepy Castle scenario, you open up a multitude of other scenarios to play that totally change up the game while keeping it rooted within it’s engine. Instead of exploring a castle, fighting enemies and solving the mystery of what’s happening you could find yourself exploring a colossal cavern full of puzzles and items to find, but your character isn’t as strong in this scenario, you have to find clever ways around most opponents to make the most of your time so you can return to your save point for full health, or find shortcuts back. Another scenario might have you shooting off into space to explore multiple planets as a different character, as well as offering even more new gameplay mechanics and battle gimmicks including a wacky battle against a book monster that turns the game briefly into a hilarious text based romp to damage the boss via picking the write answers to choose your own adventure style questions.

The $15 price tag might seem high upon viewing what the game looks like, but the amount of content jammed into the game is well worth the price of admission, and it’s a game I may very well do videos on just to spread the good word around more. I’ve yet to fully finish this title, but it’s a crime how hidden this game is due to the extreme niches that it’s targetting. It’s a very special kind of game that clearly shows the devs cared, and I hope it continues to grow with some supposed plan patching. I hope to finish this one very soon!

The Ur-Quan Masters

By all intents and purposes, I hate how this game plays. Hyper Melee combat is crap tier, blasphemous I know, but this still makes the list for the exceedingly massive amount of small details that just change up how certain events can be done and the sheer number of ways to actually drive the game to it’s conclusion.

It’s hard to really talk about UQM/Star Control 2 as there’s just so much to it, farming planets to upgrade your ship to find more planets all within a time limit etc. but it’s really the fact that every side in the story has it’s own angle. A few of the races are under-developed but a vast majority of them have some ties or connections to others, there’s alliances, secret civilizations, and you find out in the end that maybe the awful things trying to enslave everything aren’t quite so awful. It’s actually awe inspiring seeing how much time they took on the thing to just pound gobs of dialogue down your throat, also a bit of a problem too.

UQM/SC2 feels a lot like a visual novel, a genre I abhore personally despite seeing the merits and why people like them. There’s a game attached underneath it all, but it’s a fundamentally broken janky game with a bunch of ships that feel awkward to control for the pure sake of being awkward and it just doesn’t work. Yet, here I am throwing this on my best of list cause of the above, despite the visual novel approach there’s at least 3-4 ways to approach most situations in the game, you could incite war between two races to dwindle one down and sneak in and steal what you need from them, OR you can prove yourself a mighty warrior by defeating a crapload of them in combat and obtain what you need that way. There’s an entirely optional alliance that can be forged that’ll get you some extra fighters in the final battle, ones that are particularly good at fighting in that final battle. Or you can skip out entirely. The amount of choice and consequence is fairly staggering for a game it’s age, and on those merits alone it’s certainly worth trying out or at the very least, checking out a longplay and enjoying it that way.

The final note too is that the races are all extremely different, part of the joy is just accidentally stumbling across something like the Zoq Fot Pik and wondering just what in the hell is happening. Your first encounter with the Ur-Quan Kohr-Ah is also likely to rattle anyone, and so on. Despite the majority of it’s flaws, the game never fails to make the element of discovery and surprise feel immense.

UQM/SC2 is not a short game, it’ll take a good 12-18 or so hours even with a guide and probably much longer without as you can very easily fail key events needed to get through to the final encounter by taking too long figuring out what to do. Having played it though, color me cautiously optimistic about the recently announced Star Control 3, should they fix the actual combat and resource management it could be a tremendous game assuming that they can keep the diversity as well among the cast. Only time will tell.

Final Fantasy 15

This was an inevitability for me, as one of the people that followed this game since it’s unveiling as Versus, it was impossible to keep my expectations in check.

While the game’s story is told in the most butt backwards way sometimes, it’s carried by some of the best dialogue the franchise has ever seen, and a cast of characters that really feels like a jumbled bunch of friends on a right proper road trip. Couple it with a properly motivated villian for once and there’s solid gold to be found within.

Despite my (and everyone else’s) impossible to meet expectations, the game somehow did for me, and more. FF15 is not a game that rewards the impatient, a large chunk of the game’s heart is actually deeply rooted away in side plots, hidden dialogues, missions, things that you wouldn’t expect, and the more you explore it, the more rewarded you are. It’s an open world game I can actually enjoy, there’s a myriad of hidden dungeons, strange creatures, all manner of stuff populating the world and while its not the largest game ever made it doesn’t need to be.

It’s also a game that manages to spend it’s first 15-20 minutes well, accquainting you with the ragtag band of protagonists before hurtling them on a hunt to fix their ride. It’s something that can only be done convincingly in a video game, and it does it so damn well. People are unbelievably divided about the cast, the plot, the setting etc. but I’ve never felt more attached to an FF universe than this one. The boys are your dumb friends, your gateway to an alternate reality where fighting vicious free range beasts for a camp cookout meal is completely normal, or spending 3 in game days playing pinball for prizes is just no big deal. They’ll talk with eachother, small banter, play cards in a hotel, even mock eachother jokingly taking jabs from time to time and it just feels mostly natural. They also sometimes just don’t say anything at all, admiring the roadside scenery when driving from point A to point B and it’s just fantastic for it. I can see how if people didn’t have buddies like these it might be a mess, but for those that did it’s about the closest to home a game has gotten since the odd and lovely surrealism Deadly Premonition threw onto wooded mountain towns.

The game isn’t without flaws, no game is. The combat is no deeper than any given Secret of Mana game for SNES, much of your time fighting will be spent pausing and throwing around healing potions like they’re some kind of candy, and your allies, while great friends, tend to be terrible fighters and often can be found rolling around on the ground. It’s a slick and fun combat engine, but it leaves little for imaginative players to try. Magic subsequently is lacking, while you can craft some amazing spells, you’re rooted to 3 types, fire, thunder, and blizzard, each can be augmented to cast more times, do more damage, or even multicast into a few elements, but it never feels any different throwing the magic out even if it has a deathx99 quintcast modifier. Still, once you’re used to the system it can be oddly satisfying to take down late game beasties by parrying their every move and warping around to get the best tactical advantages, it just needed some more work. Likewise, the games boss battles are almost all heavily scripted boring slugfests, and it’s only in the latter half of the game that it feels like they finally got the engine working with them how they wanted. Too little too late.

For all the combat issues however, the most unforgiveable sin of 15 is just the feeling that it had to be rushed. The game’s final development period may have spanned 10 years, but 15 as we know it was only in the oven for 3-4. The fact that Square themselves have said they want to patch in cutscenes should really make the argument for itself, the game really did need maybe another 6 or so months in the oven. But how could they? Being under contract to finish things on time certainly had to factor in, and what’s more the fan demand to finally release the game was at an all time peak. The result is this tremendous feeling story that ends up feeling compressed and disjointed, and while I personally enjoyed every second of it and was emotionally invested by the time the credits rolled and all was said and done, I still found myself browsing around trying to piece together some nuances I missed. FF15 is a neat story, told terribly and that’s extremely unfortunate. Whether the content patches will fix this or not we’ll have to wait and see, and we still don’t know the full extent of the DLC plan and if it scales beyond just character stories.

The score for the game does an incredible job setting the scene for all these spectacles, featuring TONS of motifs and callbacks to previous entries while also crafting new ones for the game itself. Magna Insomnia’s one of the neatest trakcs I’ve heard from a game OST this year, and the sweeping music that kicks in while doing field exploration compliments the world so well. To say little of jamming to classic Final Fantasy music in the car or on your portable player in the field. It works well, it’s a more subdued soundtrack not steeped in melody, yet still has those memorable pieces and incredibly well crafted music. The sooner people can let go of Nobuo era music for the series, the more I feel it can grow and it already feels like 15’s soundtrack flourishes in an entirely new direction, not everybody will appreciate this, but it’s worth noting it anyways.

Final Fantasy 15 is just an extremely wild game, Square went and outdid themselves trying all manner of new ideas and ways to expand the series into territories it’s not been to. It’s not the turn-based games you grew up playing, but it shouldn’t be, imagine if every FF game just continued to play like 7? Or even FF3 or 5 with nonstop class shifting and leveling. FF is a series that’s always pushed forward by expanding itself, and 15 continues to do so. There were many misfires along the way, and nobody will ever agree upon a best one in the franchise or a worst one, everybody’s different, but I’ll always continue to admire Square Enix for the constant effort they put into their projects, for better or worse. While this list is in no particular order, I officially give the title of 2016 Game of the Year to Final Fantasy 15.

So we’re done right? Naw, it’s time for the bonus round, welcome to the worst games I played in 2016!

WORST GAMES I PLAYED IN 2016 (IN NO ORDER):

Doom & Destiny

What happens when people run amok with RPG Maker and make a self referential, meme-laden RPG with too many ideas in the kitchen sink and built off of only free assets?

Well, frankly a goddamn mess. The game has zero identity or heart, and tends to place it’s fate into the hands of junk like the Flying Spaghetti Monster, hentai jokes, and all other manner of troped shenanigans. I’m not normally one to judge either, but the game sits pretty proudly on a hefty chunk of positive reviews and I have to wonder why, exactly. It’s not a nostalgic trip down memory lane, nor does it land as a stride forward in RPG innovations. It DOES contain a somewhat nifty approach to character building, but even on the higher difficulties it doesn’t matter as it all comes down to grinding til your eyes fall out.

It may not be the worst game I played from a gameplay standpoint, but it’s a game that makes me question exactly what it is that people want out of games, Doom & Destiny is a baffling trip that feels unfocused and I’m unsure what sort of audience it was shooting for as it misses the mark of both oldschool RPG catering and the mark of being humurous. All I can think of is MEMES BRUH, and I suppose that’s just enough to push units, and that alone is pretty upsetting cause I’m a grumpy no-funner.

Mighty No. 9

I didn’t like the demo for the game, I didn’t back the KS for the game, I saw nothing but madness throughout the entire process and yet, here we are, with me still having played it against my better judgement.

The folly of the entire thing just lies on the shoulders that MN9 tried to stand, and the sheer over ambition of launching for a bajillion systems. More than that though, it lies in the tickbox design. Nothing in Mighty No. 9 stands out, even in the slightest and that’s the problem. It feels like a game where the team was contacted and asked to deliver a product that was written on a list, within this list it had boss attacks, stages, and how they look and move and that was it. Rather than a coat of polish or pushing to make the game feel solid, it’s all sort of thrown into a blender as is and spat back out into the product that you see.

It was a massively mishandled deal, and it’s a shame it couldn’t have reached higher. It’s not even the first time a few million dollars was spent on something that became nothing by Inafune on a project, just check out the king of pirates sometime and dig around. While not entirely his fault, it fills the idea too though that maybe these old things we always go back and try aren’t actuallya s amazing as we thought. MN9 by all means is just a really bad Mega Man game mixed with a mediocre Mega Man X game, and the result is just a lukewarm bag of meh, a lot of the stuff that’s in it from the KS didn’t need to be in it at all such as voice acting, or a 5 dollar bonus level that’s a sewer (how I wish I was kidding) it all just doesn’t add up, and I hope it leads to people in the future placing their confidence and voices into smaller projects that actually desperately need the funding.

Really, the worst of it is, that while typing this I can’t remember any of the boss names barring one or two, and it’s simply cause they had wretched personalities that stood out like sore thumbs. The bland music (Namiki, please stick to chiptunes : <) unoriginal stage design and overall weightless feeling of the game just made for 2016’s most forgettable experience, and a forgettable game is worse than a memorable bad game any day of the week.

Kirby’s Pinball Land

Kirby and pinball should be awesome! It’s not though, my god it’s just not.

Despite Nintendo being able to marry Kirby and golf into one hell of a rad game, they were not able to do the same here. This poor game is a slopfest of gimmick driven stages, on strict timing, and despite being a 20 minute long game if you know what you’re doing, it’s closer to like a 20 year long game when constantly fighting with the controls and the RNG of some bosses.

I can even handle junk like Sonic Spinball, but this took the cake as the most obnoxious licensed pinball game I tried, and thinking back Nintendo also tried this with Mario too to similar results. Not sure about Metroid Prime Pinball, but I’m at least 90% sure I know what to expect. Say no to pocket pinball kids.

Final Fight: Streetwise

Fortunately, this game is a so atrocious it’s hilarious deal, but it definitely has to make this list.

Streetwise is what happens when a marketing team tells a dev to scrap their game entirely and throw it at edgy teens. It is absolutely a tickbox of every single thing that was selling games at the time. Slipknot? Yep, what about edgy dialogue and hookers? It’s got those too, and it has super awful mega evil mega drugs! About the most Final Fight thing in this game is Haggar doing Haggar things, the rest is a hilarious mess of 3 button combos, overpowered gun weaponry, and fighting people named crap like Spaghetti Boy.

It’s just too easy to have a blast and bust a lung laughing at how obscene it all is, while subsequently being tragic knowing that at some point it was going to be an entirely different game that looked much more in line with the company’s other offerings like the Maximo titles. It’s an awful poo-filled treasure of a game that highlights the dire industry problem of focus groups and the extreme want to always be relevant, and if you can handle absolutely crass and stupid humor it’s worth spending a few bucks to buy this trash used somewhere and possibly plow through it with a group of people to poke fun of it with.

Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune

I know this pick is going to light somebody’s head on fire, but I have a great many words to say about this one and why Naughty Dog’s first foray into cinematic gaming was a mess.

For starters, it feels like a hodge podge of some of the worst elements of games that were better than it, smushed together to create something that feels very strange. At the time of it’s release I’m fairly aware it was a leader in the genre, but I feel like by at least a couple years the first Gears of War pre-dated it, and that nailed cover fire gunplay brilliantly. The platforming is just the worst parts of the Prince of Persia games of past rearing their ugly heads, and being done worse, and the game also hadn’t quite gotten down making us care for the characters yet (nor would it til midway through Uncharted 2)

It also feels like the beginning of the end for me, not of games or anything crazy, but the slow slide from cleverly crafted gameplay experiences in favor of hollywood budget shooting galleries with set piece after set piece. Set Piece Gaming, I call it, for lack of better terms. Within Set Piece Gaming, the bare minimum is shot for in doing something odd or different, and instead we’re treated to a gallery of human meat bags of varying degrees while around us a Michael Bay level of insanity happens, and it only seems to get worse as the game goes on, and as gaming itself goes on.

While still a gorgeous game by today’s standards, it feels like it trips over itself the entire way between clumsy melee, horrific gunplay, spongey enemies and some paper thin villians nothing really has the impact the game thinks it’s giving you. After the 8th time a ledge crumbles away and Drake slaps the wall and tumbles downwards only to grab another, you stop being surprised and you start questioning what the game wants you to feel. Not to mention the constant bending of it’s own rules to sometimes give you unlimited ammo for key sequences, only to not only remove that ammo next scene, but also remove your gun entirely for no discernable reason. Many of the design choices are baffling, and while I enjoyed playing 2, and 3 more I very much realized they’re all the damn same just with better writing and set pieces.

Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune also just has a large amount of questionable sections such as trying to pilot a jetski up a river while the river pushes you back, and you can’t drive and shoot at the same time, also there’s explosive barrels. Also there’s guys that shoot you. It’s that level of extreme over-doing it that pushes me away from the Uncharted games, and each of the games had something to a similarly stupid degree. The folly of designing a game around these massive scenes and then remembering you’re a game and having to compensate by doing weird things that bash you back and forth of whether you’re enjoying a cinematic experience or playing something that feels as archaic at points as a 1990s playstation title.

I’m actually amazed the game got multiple sequels, of which I played all but the one on Vita and the newest one on Playstation 4. I see why people enjoy the series, but it pushes so far away from being like a game or playing like a game at points only to betray your trust and throw those weird massive set pieces at you in an unholy whirlwind that it feels more dizzying than it does innovative or interesting. All I can think about playing them, aside from wanting to see what happens to the characters next is “What would a budget this huge do for a properly different and innovative title” and I feel looking far, far back that some of the best films and games were created on shoestring budgets due to the need to be more imaginative and creative. Despite listing a MASSIVE budget game as my game of the year, it was it’s willingness to push into different territory and try some occasionally weird stuff and it all feels warranted. Uncharted, on the other hand, feels like the polar opposite of just taking your budget and stapling all the most expensive bells and whistles on, it’s like that noisy sports car in the city to me. Everyone’s looking, and most are impressed, but deep down in my mind it’s a giant noise machine made to attract attention and for whatever reason it seems to work.

I’m happy with the simple Jalopy in the garage, the Crash Bandicoots and the first Jak game from when Naughty Dog was still finding out just what it was they were trying to do. It didn’t take grand spectacles or over-the-top bond villians of the week to make those memorable, and they may not have aged greatly at all but it’s nice to look back and admire, not through tinted glasses but through clear eyes, admiring every dent, ding, and scratch cause they all tell a story.

Instead, everyone opts to tell the same over-polished one, and it’s pretty tiring! Thank goodness for the few innovators still out there trying new things, the young creators working to build new out of the old, and the people that don’t forget and won’t forget just how different gaming was and is now, even within the last 5-10 years. Thanks for checking my tops of 2016, and see you all around in 2017 with more of that game dev stuff!

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