The Games I Played in 2017

Those who know me, know that I play an awful lot of video games. I’ve been playing whatever I could get my hands on since I first laid eyes on Super Mario Bros. in the 80’s. Today, I own more games than I know what to do with. Wait… wasn’t my New Years Resolution to stop buying games? Yeah… well… about that… I managed to play though hundreds of hours of games this year… playing 30 different titles from start to finish… but I also added 113 games into my collection. As you can see, I have some bad habits. But games make me happy. So which ones did I play this year? I’m glad you asked!

Now, I must lead with a disclaimer: I work in the games industry. This is a personal website, and that means that views are my own. They are not representative of my employer. That employer (EA) happens to own the rights to some of the games that I’m discussing here… and so rather than attempt to rate the games on some sort of 5 star scale I’m instead opting to try and give some genuine thoughts about the games. I’m not writing anything here for any reason other than I like video games. Practically every game on this blog post is one that I had never before played. There are some exceptions, and I’ll be sure to mention them.

The Games I Played From Start To Finish

Dragon Age Origins – PC
Dragon Age II – PC
Endless Legend – PC
Final Fantasy Tactics: War of The Lions – PSP
Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest – 3DS
Fire Emblem Fates: Revelations – 3DS
Grow Home – PC
Gunpoint – PC
Hyper Light Drifter – PC
Influent (French) – PC
Jeanne D’Arc – PSP
A King’s Tale: Final Fantasy XV – Xbox One
Guild Wars 2 Living World Season 3 – PC
Leisure Suit Larry Goes Looking for Love (in Several Wrong Places) – PC
Lumino City – PC
Machinarium – PC
Material Girl – PC
Mega Man Zero – Game Boy Advance
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor – PC
Mighty No. 9 – PC
Mini Metro – Android
Persona 4 – PlayStation 3
Shape of The World (Alpha) – PC
Shatterhand – Nintendo Entertainment System
Sid Meier’s Civilization V – PC
The Stanley Parable – PC
Star Wars Battlefront II – PC
Suikoden II – PSP
Super Mario Bros. 3 – Nintendo Entertainment System
TIMEframe – PC
Valkyria Chronicles – PC

The Games I Lacked The Patience to Keep Playing

Akalabeth: World of Doom – PC
Altered Beast – PlayStation 3
Frozen Synapse – PC
Jetpac – Xbox One
Jetpac Refulled – Xbox One
Octodad – PC
R.C. Pro-Am – Xbox One
Robo Recall – Oculus Rift
Star Wars Battlefront – PC
Subnautica – Oculus Rift
Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness – PC
Viva Piñata – Xbox One


The Games I Played From Start To Finish

Dragon Age Origins – PC

I played this game because I was hired by BioWare and had expectations that I would someday work on this franchise. I also felt that I owed it to myself to play more of the company’s library than just Mass Effect. When this game came out, I was engrossed with Left 4 Dead, Kingdom Hearts, and Guild Wars with very little interest in anything else.

Coming into it now, sure the graphics are dated, but you know what? And I say this not because I’m an EA employee… but I loved this game. The characters had a great feel to them, the world felt real, the combat was challenging (I didn’t realize you could pause and set-up commands until near the very end of the game), and it just felt really really solid. I think the game holds up fantastically and would really recommend it to anyone who’s got an interest in Dungeons & Dragons, Tolkien, or any other Fantasy type content. It didn’t feel grindy to me, and I really, authentically, enjoyed every one of those 60 hours I put into it.

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Dragon Age II – PC

After completing DAO, the next logical choice of game to play was clearly Dragon Age II.

How can I put this diplomatically…?

Dragon Age II did not feel as inspired as Dragon Age Origins. I loved the voice acting. The characters themselves were appealing, but this was a game that was much more about the world’s evolution than the character’s evolution. It’s interesting in that approach, but the game relies far too much on asking the player to run through the same dungeons over and over. I didn’t feel like my choices mattered, but rather as though the world simply was… and I was there for the ride.

I did not enjoy the repetition.

This game ate up about half the time that Dragon Age Origins did, and I felt like this game was longer.

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Endless Legend – PC

Endless Legend is one of those games that’s received a decent amount of hype. I haven’t played a tremendous amount of strategy games (mostly having stuck with Civilizations my entire life, and having just tried Total War for the first time in 2016) so I don’t have a huge knowledge of what Endless is innovating on and what is standard fare for the genre.

That said, it plays somewhat similar to Civilizations in that you choose a civilization (or faction) and then build cities, develop technology, raise armies, and conquer the world. There are a bunch of differences. Each faction has much more of a unique set of tech and military than in Civ, where the differences are pretty balanced. Combat is also somewhat of an interesting turn-based thing which you also have the option to auto-complete.

My biggest gripe was that I had difficulty even being able to find my cities sometimes. I don’t think the UI is as friendly as it could be and it just felt somewhat clumsy to me.

It wasn’t a bad game, but it didn’t really pull me in. It helped re-kindle my interest in Civilizations.

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Final Fantasy Tactics: War of The Lions – PSP

Now, above is the trailer for the original game. It was 1997 when I first played Final Fantasy VII, and it was 1997 when I first played Final Fantasy Tactics. That was one hell of a good year. This was my first time playing the updated War of The Lions which is very much the same, however there have been updates to many names of places, people, items… it fixes the translation, adds voice acting, adds beautiful cinematics, and fixes some bugs as well as adding some additional scenes. The in-game graphics are the same.

Final Fantasy Tactics is easily one of my favourite games of all time, and the updated War of The Lions version that’s available on PSP, iOS, and Android somehow made it even better. The new additions make the game practically perfect. From what I understand the iOS version is less laggy, but I haven’t played it.

The story (which in my opinion puts Game of Thrones on the same level as Green Eggs and Ham), music (epic), graphics(a fantastic blend of pixel art and low poly… I love the illustrative look in the new cut scenes), and game play (incredible variety in the job system) all merge together into something that is truly top notch.

I can’t stress how much I think this game is a masterpiece. I hope this gets a Steam port some day as I’ll be really sad if I ever lose access to this.

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Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest- 3DS

Fire Emblem is a tactical RPG series that I’ve been playing for around 10 years now, starting with The Sacred Stones on the Game Boy Advance. I gotta say, I’ve yet to play one of these games that I haven’t liked. Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright was kind of iffy with me when I played it in 2016. It was rather easy compared to other games that I’ve played, and you know… I don’t think I’m 100% in favour of the breeding aspect of the game.

That’s right, when not on the battlefield, you’ll be breeding your warriors. Then letting the offspring grow up in a parallel dimension.

Anyways, the whole shtick with Conquest and Birthright is that it’s the same game, same characters, but you get to make a choice that forces the whole rest of the game to split into a different direction. It’s kind of cool, but honestly, I think it’s a bit of an annoyance that the games are sold separately and not as one package deal. Birthright is distinctly easier than Conquest, and I feel it really could have been a better experience had the developers planned specifically to guide you through the story in an intended order rather than letting the customer choose their own adventure.

Conquest is hard, and the plot feels a lot more interesting than Birthright. It’s a great game, though it feels partially stale if you’ve already spent close to 30 hours on Birthright.

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Fire Emblem Fates: Revelations – 3DS

The final part of the Fire Emblem Fates saga is Revelations. Where in Birthright you chose to align with the kingdom of Hoshido which is a Japan themed country and in Conquest you chose to align with the European themed kingdom of Nohr… in Revelations, you refuse to side with either of the nations and instead forge ahead in uniting the kingdoms together against the evil-at-large.

It was the most well done of the three stories. By this point I’d already sunk almost 60 hours into the Fates games, and it was still fun to play. I wouldn’t recommend you play it without the experience of playing the others however, as the charm in this series is the fact that you get to see how things can turn based on a single decision.

If you’re looking for something challenging, lengthy, and tactical for the 3DS, I’d 100% recommend this series. But if you haven’t played a Fire Emblem game at all, maybe go with Fire Emblem Awakening. It’s, in my opinion, a better game; won’t cost as much money; and won’t be as much of a time sink.

Once you realize how great FE is, go ahead and give these three games a shot too.

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Grow Home – PC

Grow Home was a game that I’d had on my Wish List, and when I saw it as part of a Humble Bundle, I couldn’t help but give up the $1 asking price to add it to my collection. This is (I think?) only the second Ubisoft game I’ve played; the first being Assassin’s Creed. It’s essentially the exact same game.

Well, maybe not the exact same. But you do climb things.

It was the first game I ever let my kid play. He was astoundingly bad at it, but he figured out that he could move the character with one joystick, and move the camera with the other. When he made the character jump… well he was practically beside himself with excitement.

Dear son, was hopelessly unable to accomplish anything by himself, but he was really happy to watch me play, and tell me whenever he saw crystals or animals or plants that I should try to collect. He was thrilled when I would grab onto a plant and pilot it through the air, and loved finding sheep. It’s a great game with no violence that I felt confident in playing in front of him.

Climbing things is relatively intuitive, and it’s a rather simple, yet fun game.

I’d recommend this to anyone looking for something to relax with. I loved the low-poly art style.

Kiddo should be ready for Assassin’s Creed any day now.

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Gunpoint – PC

Gunpoint is a pretty great game! It’s a 2D stealth puzzle platformer. The story was pretty fun, and the levels themselves kept up enough of a progression that it stayed interesting for me the whole way through. It’s not a terribly long game, but I think it was as long as it needed to be to keep from going stale.

I’d say it’s worth checking out even if you are somewhat of a casual gamer.

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Hyper Light Drifter – PC

This game is fantastic. Metroid meets Zelda. It was challenging, sounded great musically, visually beautiful, and one of my favourite games that I’ve played in the time that I’ve been playing games.

Inspiring as someone who wants to make my own games.

Not for casual gamers due to the difficulty… but I found it super enjoyable. I would recommend this to most of the people I know who consider themselves gamers.

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Influent (French) – PC

Influent is a game that I’d “played” in 2016, while trying to expand my Japanese vocabulary. It’s useful, but pretty basic. And… unfortunately, I think I’ve already forgotten most of the words. I really should refresh my memory. That’s the tough thing about language… if you don’t use it, you tend to forget it…

Anyways, it’s a neat system that is essentially a flash card system, but used spacial reasoning as well since it’s a 3D environment that you move about in. Since I moved to Montréal this year, I decided to re-play the game to refresh/pick up some French vocabulary. It’s more entertaining to me than pure flash card memorization.

It’s surprising how when you hear a number like “400” words… you think it’ll be useful, yet there are so… so many words that you need to be able to converse.

Polyglots have my respect.

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Jeanne D’Arc – PSP

I was pretty interested in checking out Jeanne D’Arc back when it was originally released, but I actually didn’t even own a PSP at the time. I finally got around to picking one up in 2010, and eventually got the game during a PSN sale for just over $5 this year!

My PSP(s) are both reaching the end of their life-span. The batteries on both of them became exhausted this year and I was able to buy a new one, but I wonder how long that’s going to last. This means I’m likely going to be trying to play any and all PSP games during my commute that I can in the near future.

Jeanne is a tactical RPG along the same line as Tactics Ogre or Final Fantasy Tactics, but it has some unique stuff that I haven’t seen before. I liked the way units became stronger when near each other, the variety of skills that could be equipped, and the different shapes that those skills could affect on the battlefield. The game was a little simple, and slow paced, but it was pretty solid. It was a change of pace to have to meet specific victory conditions rather than simply eliminating the enemy every battle.

I really thought it was refreshing to see some hand drawn animation in the game. I wish more games would make use of that medium.

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A King’s Tale: Final Fantasy XV – Xbox One

I’ve been keen to play Final Fantasy XV since it was initially announced as Final Fantasy Versus XIII when I was in college. Can you believe the game had 49 minutes of trailers over it’s decade of development?? Over the years, I kind of… lost the hype though. I’m still excited to play it some day, but the past decade hasn’t done much to keep me invested in the brand I loved as a child. It’s been recently announced that it will be coming to Steam, so maybe I’ll end up picking it up in 2018.

I was a little disappointed to see the game getting exclusive DLC depending on where you pre-ordered and what version you bought. I really miss the NES/SNES days I guess. So I was pretty disappointed when I saw a pixel art mini-game being advertised as one of the exclusive pre-order bonuses. Thankfully, Square-Enix ended up making this game available for free on both PS4 and XBone.

Unfortunately the game was incredibly uninspired and a waste of my time.

I did not enjoy it.

It plays like an arcade beat-em-up / brawler. If you want to play one of those, go play Maximum Carnage, The Avengers, Turtles in Time, or heck even Golden Axe. There’s a huge library of great games, and even at the price of free, I didn’t feel this was worth my time.

Sorry.

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Guild Wars 2 Living World Season 3 – PC

Across all characters, I have played for 1743 hours 25 minutes over the past 1,556 days. I don’t know how I feel about that. I just dug up my Guild Wars 1 account, and across all characters, I have played for 705 hours 8 minutes over the past 109 months. That’s a lot of hours.

That should tell you that I like Guild Wars. The lore is deep, and I enjoy it. I’ve read the novels too. I took almost two years off during 2013 / 2015. I did a lot of work on personal projects, but I also played a lot of Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2. I would love to play more of it, but I’ve also been trying to branch out and play a larger variety of games over the past couple of years. My backlog has grown too large.

Well, I’ve got the latest Path of Fire content, and have yet to play it. But I played through Heart of Thorns last year, and this year, I decided to play through Season 3 of the Living Story. I’m looking forward to playing more of the game at some point. The Jump Puzzles in Guild Wars 2 are some of my favourite things to do. I love the music and art in this game.

The one thing I find disappointing, is that since Heart of Thorns, GW2 now has a “mastery” system, which requires you to grind experience in different parts of the map in order to unlock skills. I am not a fan of this system. I have noticed that ArenaNet has improved opening treasure and using items so that you can now process multiple items at once (instead of double clicking everything). This clears up some of the tedium, but I’m still disappointed in the mastery system’s tedium. Additionally, there are now specializations for the different professions, however I would like to see the ability to change these specializations on the fly.

All in all, despite some minor gripes in the mechanics, I love the game, and was really happy to see the story develop in a way that brought back a lot of the lore from the original Guild Wars games. Kudos ArenaNet, I’m looking forward to eventually making time for Path of Fire, Living Story Season 4, and beyond. Please bring back Cantha!

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Leisure Suit Larry Goes Looking for Love (in Several Wrong Places) – PC

I gotta say… I remember that I played this game, but I don’t really recall it having any sort of impact on me. It’s a Sierra adventure game, which means you get to type lots of stuff. But I don’t feel the puzzles were particularly difficult. Maybe that’s just because I’ve been playing them pretty consistently for the past few years now? There’s over a half hour of footage on YouTube on the different ways you can die in the game, so it’s got to be somewhat of a challenge… but I remember this being particularly easy compared to the King’s / Space / Quest for Glory games.

I don’t think it was amazing enough that you need to bother. The Quest for Glory series, on the other hand, is amazeballs.

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Lumino City – PC

Alphabetical order’s a bitch. I actually played this -after- the next game (Machinarium). My kid, as it turns out, likes point-and-click adventures! So after we completed Machinarium, I decided to give this one a go. I’ve been super keen to try it for ages, as the graphics are photographed props. The craft behind this game is ultra appealing to me – and the music is also delicious.

Unlike with Machinarium, we were able to look up solutions to puzzles directly in the game. This is something I feel all difficult-to-solve games like this should have. I feel less bad about myself as a human if the game gives me everything I need to be able to figure out how to beat it. I’ll never forgive Konami for Castlevania II.

My biggest gripe with the game is the fact that I was playing with a toddler. Meaning I had to read everything out loud. The text is tiny, and moves at it’s own pace. It’s not easy to read from across the room (playing with a wireless keyboard on my TV from the sofa) when trying to entertain a toddler. It’d be nice if they could have allowed you to control text speed.

I’d definitely suggest you check out Lumino City

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Machinarium – PC

Here’s a game that I decided to try with my 2 year old because, well, he doesn’t exactly have a ton of hand-eye coordination at the moment. Point-and-click adventures are great because they are able to communicate a story without much text. My kid loved this one and would eagerly jump around pointing at things as we talked about what was happening. He loved solving the puzzles with me, and would frequently ask to play it with me.

Fun little game right here, but I’ll admit, I had to look up solutions a couple of times.

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[!!!!NSFW!!!!]Material Girl – PC[!!!!NSFW!!!!]

Look… according to steamspy, this game has around 250,000 owners. I’m not proud to be one of them. But in my defence, when I bought this game, it was $1, and I had well over that from selling trading cards on Steam. I effectively got this game for free.

I gave it a shot because I think it would be interesting/profitable to try and make a game that focuses on sex. There are lots of people who are successfully making a living from selling sex games on Patreon (and elsewhere) and I genuinely am interested in tapping into that market. So for the sake of market research, I gave this one a whirl.

It’s got a Very Positive rating on steam.

It’s one of the worst games I’ve played in my life.

I don’t understand what these people are thinking.

The sexiness didn’t jive with me. This is a game where the main character, which you play, gets raped a bunch. There are characters you get to take charge with and sex-up… presumably for enjoyment… but a lot of the content is rapey. I can’t get behind this.

If you try to look past the subject matter itself… the music is dull, the graphics are half-assed, the dialogue (Japanese) sounds terrible, and the translation / layout of text is complete trash. To top it off, the gameplay itself is tedious. It’s just not fun to play.

I do not recommend.

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Mega Man Zero – Game Boy Advance

I’ve had MM Zero on my radar since it first came out, but I didn’t have access to a GBA at the time. I’ve loved MM games, and Zero is one of my favourite characters of all time. How can you not like that bad-ass Z-Saber??

Well… I didn’t enjoy this game at all. I played it through to completion out of some sort of self-inflicted masochism, but it was one of the more disappointing experiences I’ve had with a game. There were barely any music tracks (music is part of what makes Mega Man!), and the game was needlessly difficult. I didn’t enjoy the use of what the game called Sprites (power-ups), and I died a few times too many to having to jump blindly somewhere that I couldn’t see.

The enemies had a very steep ratio of damage given vs received, and I felt the controls were awkward.

I wouldn’t recommend anyone play this game.

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Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor – PC

Shadow of Mordor is not canon to J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth, but the story is fun. I hated the game within the first few minutes of playing it as I felt like the controls were just absolutely terrible. It wasn’t particularly fun getting slaughtered the first time I encountered a group of orcs.

But I kept going, and as more skills were unlocked, everything got easier and easier. It felt pretty great getting so powerful that you felt unbeatable. The problem however, is I became so overpowered that the game ceased to have any difficulty. Finishing the game seemed almost pointless once the challenge began to evaporate, but overall I’m still glad I played the game.

Worth a play, but that final boss? Quick Time Events are disappointing.

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Mighty No. 9 – PC

I was there at PAX when this game was announced. I’ve got a Keiji Inafune autographed Mega Man neck-tie that I made. I grew up on Mega Man. I, of course, helped back this on Kickstarter.

It’s not fantastic.

I think the community was far more disappointed by it than I was. It was playable, and it entertained me enough to play it all the way through. It just wasn’t as fantastic as I was hoping for from a Mega Man spiritual successor. (I’m curious how Mega Man 11 will turn out).

It’s not terrible.

I think that’s about all I have to say on it. It’s not fantastic; it’s not terrible. It didn’t quite make me cry like an anime fan on prom night.

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Mini Metro – Android

I’m not a phone gamer. Up until this point, the only game I’ve played on my phone that held my interest for any period of time was Super Hexagon. That said, I was looking for something simple I could play with my toddler when he decided that he didn’t want to sleep any later than 5:50am one morning.

I looked through my Steam Library and came across this one which I’d picked up in a humble bundle at one point. He loves all things trains, and so I figured this game about creating transit systems for major cities would be a good one for him. The kid was having a blast with it, however he’s still not particularly capable with a mouse. Surprise surprise! It turns out that not only does this game come on Android, but that same humble bundle made the Android version available to me! We’ve now got this on our tablet, and he loooves playing this with me. We’ve got a score of 1000 on all of the available cities, so I’m considering this “complete” but there’s no ending, and we’ll probably keep playing this for a long time.

Mini Metro is great for all ages.

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Persona 4 – PlayStation 3

I first heard about Shin Megami Tensei years ago. It’s a franchise that’s been around since the NES… but I’d never played any of the games at all! At one point, when researching games I should play, it came up that Persona 4 was one of the best ones out there for the PS2. As luck would have it, at the time it was on sale for dirt cheap on the PSN for PS3, so I decided to pick it up.

Enter 2017 and Persona 5 was getting heaps of hype. I saw some images for it early on, and … maybe it’s because I’m obsessed with the idea of learning Japanese and eating Hi-Chews, but I was hooked. I came extremely close to breaking my cheap tendencies, and almost pre-ordered the game. I held fast though, and instead decided to give P4 a shot.

It’s a long game. It’s got some frustrating quirks. I don’t like that if the main character is knocked unconscious, it’s game over instantly. It’s not cool losing over an hour of progress when your gaming time fits into roughly an hour and a half at night after your toddler goes to bed. But that said, it was a super fun game, and I may have gotten lucky with a nurse.

I’m super excited to play Persona 5 in 2018. Despite the length, I would recommend this one. Easily more enjoyable than any Final Fantasy game I’ve played since Tactics was released.

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Shape of The World (Alpha Version) – PC

I’m excited for Shape of The World to be available to everybody. Stu Maxwell who I worked with over at The Coalition has been working on this game for as long as I’ve known him. It’s a pretty peaceful little exploration game with a beautiful aesthetic. Don’t expect to be challenged the way you would with a platformer, or fighting game… this is about experiencing the world around you, not reflexes or puzzle solving. But that said, I think it’s going to be worth your time.

Disclaimer: I had a hand in making some of the collectible items in this game.

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Shatterhand – Nintendo Entertainment System

Holy CRAP! I don’t know how this one escaped my radar as a kid. This has to be one of the best NES games I’ve played. The levels are pretty good. It plays somewhere between Ninja Gaiden and Mega Man. The music is hot and the difficulty isn’t through the roof. It’s really really solid. I loved this one. If you’re looking for a new 2d platformer, you won’t be disappointed if you track this one down. Rare though, I can’t seem to find it less than $60 on Amazon. Hopefully Nintendo can find it in their heart to put this out for 3DS or Switch / Wii U or something. It doesn’t deserve to be lost to time.

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Sid Meier’s Civilization V – PC

This is one of the few games I played this year that I had already played in the past. If I’d bought the game immediately when I wanted to, it would have cost me roughly $80 AUD… but I was so busy at the time that I opted instead to wait a year and a half. By the time I was ready to buy it, it was on sale for $12.50 USD. This was a turning point in my economic tendencies. It’s what turned me into a patient gamer. It’s pretty rare now that I buy a game until it reaches at least 75% off on sale. I’ve got a whopping 53 games on my wish list at the moment, and am just waiting for isthereanydeal to let me know when I can buy one of them.

Anyways, I’ve played a campaign twice in the past, and this year marks number three. I’ve also got a couple of multiplayer games on the go at the moment with my co-workers. The Civ series is great, and even the old ones hold up remarkably well. While I don’t normally enjoy sim type games, I like that this has multiple routes to victory, and can be completed. If you’ve never tried one in the past, maybe give this one a go next time it’s on sale?

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The Stanley Parable – PC

Stanley Parable is a game that I’ve known about for a while. I played the demo in mid 2013, and then when I volunteered at the PAX Prime Indie Megabooth, I actually ended up monitoring the demo for a little bit while the developer had lunch and rested. Davey Wreden disappeared for a much longer portion of time that day than anticipated, and I watched it for a good chunk of time. I had your back Davey, I had it good.

It’s an interesting game that can be best described as a game that plays you.

After buying it, it sat there in my library until one fateful day when my parents were visiting. My dad does not play games. He has. He enjoyed Panzer Commander, and he did not enjoy Duck Hunt. That’s pretty much all he’s previously played.

So I decided to let a video game play him.

He was amused.

I feel confident that if you let it play you, you too will be amused. Give it a shot, it’s great.

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Star Wars Battlefront II – PC

This is… well… I don’t fully know what I should say here. I worked on this game. I have a lot to say about it. This game got some heat when it was released so it feels like I really should stay away from commenting on it at all… but… well, it’s one of the games I played, and dammit, I want to talk about my experience with the game.

One thing to keep in mind is that I am not a multiplayer gamer. I did not work on the multiplayer aspect of this game, I worked on visual effects mostly for the cinematics. I’m happy with the work I did on the game and that my immediate co-workers did too. There’s a satisfaction with knowing that while the game itself received a lot of harsh criticism, none of it was directed at work done by my team. But that said, you have to understand that since I had no part in the multiplayer component, and I do not enjoy multiplayer games, I have not played the multiplayer in BFII. It is not something I can comment on, and so from here on I won’t.

When it comes to the campaign, I enjoyed playing it. I’m a light Star Wars fan, and so I found it neat that the game is offering canon plot. It was neat going to The Last Jedi and seeing a couple of odd pieces of technology that were introduced in BFII, but the stories weren’t related enough that you would ever be lost if you experienced one and not the other. I do wish the team had had more time to polish as I don’t feel the campaign was as solid as the campaign that shipped with Battlefield 1. I would have liked to have seen more of Iden’s story.

All in all, it’s not my favourite game that I played this year (that’s Valkyria Chronicles), but I did enjoy it. Enough so, that I’m going to admit it despite the controversy surrounding the game.

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Suikoden II – PSP

Jason Schreier keeps hailing this as one of the best RPGs ever made. He’s been hyping it for years, so when I saw it on sale on the PSN a few years back, I couldn’t help but pick it up. I finally worked through Suikoden in 2016, and then was able to load my completed game when I began Suikoden II in 2017. That’s a great feature that more games should have IMO. The first time I encountered that feature was with Sierra’s Quest For Glory, and it’s a feature I’ve craved ever since.

It’s not by any means a difficult game, and there’s some moments where I had some confusion as to where to go next, but overall it’s a pretty accessible game. The story is appealing, and I would recommend it to anyone looking to explore more of the 90’s era of games. I would definitely suggest you play the first one too… while the stories aren’t 100% related, there are characters that make appearances in both, so it will feel more like a complete experience if you play them all.

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Super Mario Bros. 3 – Nintendo Entertainment System

Come on, don’t tell me you’re unfamiliar with Super Mario Bros. 3? It has to be one of the greatest games ever made. So much variety in the levels, and the powers. Secrets everywhere.. it’s just.. man, if you haven’t played this one, you need to play it right now.

As for me, this is a game I hadn’t played as a kid. Not this version at least. Sure I played it on my NES dozens of times, but this is the Japanese version I’m playing here. I was gifted a beautiful Famicom Classic Mini in 2016, so this was the first title I had to work my way through. I was surprised that (aside from the language) there were some differences between this and what we’d had in North America. The Japanese version was harder! I’m happy that I played through it, however I admit to using a warp whistle. Once my kid’s older, I might just end up having to play through it start to finish without warping.

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TIMEframe – PC

Part of the Humble Freedom Bundle, I picked this game up without any intention of ever picking it up. I’d heard nothing about it, wasn’t aware of it when I bought the bundle, and really the only reason I played it is because I keep a super nerdy spreadsheet of every game I own, along with an estimate of how long it will take to beat each game. TIMEframe was estimated at around an hour, and so one fateful day when I had an hour to kill and didn’t feel like doing anything in particular from my planned to-do list, I decided “why not give something new a shot?”.

I was glad I did.

It’s a beautiful game, with fantastic music. It’s short enough, that having completed it.. I don’t think I’ll play it again. But I would still recommend that if you’ve got an hour to spend you consider giving this one a shot.

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Valkyria Chronicles – PC

I don’t think I can say this strongly enough, but this is officially one of my favourite games of all time. As of the time of writing, this is available on PS3, PS4, and on Steam. I recommend you find one of these formats and play it. This is a 3rd Person Shooter meets Tactical JRPG that takes place with toon-shaded characters in a WWI fantasy environment. I had not played it until this year, and it’s not even a game I bought intentionally. Rather it was part of a Humble Bundle back in 2016. I played it simply because I try to play some games now and then that I’ve heard nothing about. This fit that description. I had no idea what to expect going in… and I got something that was unique, and well done. I loved the art style, the music, and most importantly the game play. The maps were great, as was the progression system. The story was a little more anime-trope-loaded than I’d like, but all around it was a solid experience. I’ll likely pick up the PSP sequels some time, and really really recommend that if you’re into tactical or strategy games, you check this out.

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The Games I Lacked The Patience to Keep Playing:

Akalabeth: World of Doom – PC

Alright so I guess we’ll start off the “will not play any more” pile with a real gem. I got this game free from gog.com and… well… hmm… I guess I’m happy I didn’t spend money on it. I will say, that you should read up on what this game is. The story behind it is actually pretty interesting. I can’t imagine what the scene was like a full 5 years before I was born, but I find it pretty impressive that Richard was able to get this thing into stores and actually launch a career. I also can’t fathom how anyone enjoyed playing it. Definitely one of those history lessons that I highly recommend you learn about if you’re a gaming enthusiast… but not something I would ever encourage someone play for fun.

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Altered Beast – PlayStation 3

I think there are people who are nostalgic for the Sega Genesis. Personally, I really loved the Shining Force games. But… I mean… I can’t for a second believe that anyone liked the audio that game out of the Genesis. Altered Beast tortured my ears, and I had to play it on mute. Aside from that, it’s a … neat spin on the Galaga style game that has a panning background. But I’m also just not a fan of the scrolling background games where you dodge and shoot things. I think I got to the third level of this… I played multiple days in a row, with the intent of completing it… but… I couldn’t do it. This game is not remotely what I want to spend my time playing.

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Frozen Synapse – PC

This is one of those games that I was really excited to try. The idea of a turn-based real-time-strategy game is something that I find conceptually interesting. I’d like to see more experimentation with this type of game design, but I found this game to be somewhere between boring and frustrating. I didn’t really care much for the overall theme of the story or the design of the artwork. So that’s what I found boring. I had issues with bugs right from the start and found it difficult even to get through menus. The actual game play felt very clunky and not intuitive to me. This means that I gave up after maybe the 5th or 6th mission. The idea of doing 50 more just wasn’t appealing. Still, I like the idea of the mechanics. Maybe there’s someone else out there that has a formula I can gel with?

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Jetpac – Xbox One

This is one of those titles on the Rare Replay disc that I’d never even heard of before. Rare’s a company that is well and truly loved by a lot of people, but the only games I’d ever really played by them were Donkey Kong Country and Battletoads. This is neither of those games. It’s… well… I guess it’s as good any most games from 1983. Which is to say, I couldn’t take it for more than a couple of minutes.

It’s neat, but I wouldn’t say this is anywhere near as good as Donkey Kong was. I wouldn’t even play this to pass time on my phone while waiting for a bus.

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Jetpac Refulled – Xbox One

It’s interesting to play an old game that has been updated. It makes it easy to see just how big of an impact audio and visuals can make. It was able to hold my attention for a full 5 minutes longer than Jetpac had, and that’s great considering I’d already played Jetpac… but I just don’t find this to be fun.

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Octodad – PC

Octodad is one of those games that’s pretty big in the indie community I guess. The game sees you as an octopus that is posing as a human. Hilarity ensues as you try to go about your everyday life, and clumsily knock everything over as you try to manipulate your octopus arms. It’s a game that is extremely difficult to control, and that’s supposed to be the charm. But I didn’t find it charming. I got to an escape sequence in a grocery store, where I was unable to get the ground mopped up and kept getting stuck.

On my fourth attempt, the game crashed my computer.

I never booted the game again.

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R.C. Pro-Am – Xbox One

Believe it or not, while I was an NES kid, I never got around to playing this one until this year with the Rare Replay! It’s actually not terrible, but it just doesn’t have much depth. My 2 year old liked watching me play it, and would frequently ask me to play the car game. So, that’s kind of rad. It’s challenging, and I’m not good enough at it to be able to beat it. It reminds me a lot of the Micro Machines game that was on NES. I might have to dig that one up some time, but I’m done with R.C. Pro-Am.

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Robo Recall – Oculus Rift

You know, this game was rather well done. If I was new to the genre, I’d probably have spent more time with it. But this is largely an advancement of the Time Crisis style arcade games of the 90’s. I played my share of them in the arcade, and they can be fun, but just aren’t the type of game I’m looking for today. I will say, the game felt pretty natural. I was using the Touch controllers, and aiming felt great. It all felt pretty responsive, but I did find the teleportation to be somewhat awkward (though not at all nauseating). If you haven’t played the genre to death, you might enjoy this game. To be honest, VR works far better for this type of game than an arcade machine does. It’s very immersive. I would recommend it, especially to anyone new to VR, however I prefer games that focus on strategy, narrative, and exploration over reflexes.

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Star Wars Battlefront – PC

OK, so let’s be real here. Look through the list of games I’ve played this year, and you’ll see that they’re primarily single player experiences. That’s what I enjoy right now in my life. When I was in college I loved Battlefield 1942, Left 4 Dead, and Left 4 Dead 2. But outside of those games, I’ve pretty much avoided multiplayer games. The things that I dislike about multiplayer games are: a – listening to other people; b – making noise at night that might wake up my sleeping toddler (thus ending my spare time); c – leaving my team a person short when my toddler wakes up and I have to leave the game; d – feeling as though I’m affecting any one else’s experience if I want to take a moment to explore, or if I’m under performing.

So I did not give the multi-player even 1 minute of my time.

This game doesn’t have a single player campaign.

I am not this game’s target audience.

I played Battlefront because I was on Battlefront II, but since I was working on visual effects artwork for the campaign/cinematics it really didn’t have much of an impact on what I was doing other than setting a bar for the graphics quality. (Namely, nothing should look worse than anything in this game). Since weapon effects weren’t part of my task list, I stopped playing after completing the tutorials. I can’t fairly comment on whether or not you should play this game.

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Subnautica – Oculus Rift

This is one that’s a little bit disappointing to report on. On the one hand, I’ve heard good things about this game, and feel obliged to come back to it at some point; but on the other hand, I really don’t tend to care for survival type games. Collecting resources for the sake of staying alive is… from what I’m told something people enjoy doing in video games, but it’s not what I enjoy doing in video games.

If I do come back to it, it will be with keyboard and mouse. I found the VR experience to be 100% unenjoyable. Maybe because it was one of my first experiences with VR? But I felt that it made me feel extremely dizzy and uncomfortable. This is not a feeling I’ve had before, and generally VR isn’t hard on me.. but I found the instant acceleration of movement with the controller to be really hard on my senses. I don’t think I’d recommend that anyone play this in VR unless they’re well and properly acclimated to VR.

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Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness – PC

Wow, so… what can I say about this game? It’s… well… it broke new ground. Created by Richard Garriott and released in ’81 it’s… rough around the edges. You know, it’s interesting because this year I also read The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers (which I totally recommend you read too), and it was fascinating to get a sense of how games were developed in the early days. Reading up on the history of this one (along with Akalabeth) is certainly fascinating from a historical stand point. I can see how the mechanics here inspired Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy (neither of which I would be able to play for any length of time today)… but at the same time it’s just unbearable for me to play. I find the mechanics too simplistic and the grinding to be absolutely the worst. I put a couple of hours into this thing, but I just can’t see myself being motivated enough to ever return to this.

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Viva Piñata – Xbox One

From what I understand, this game has a bit of a cult following… it’s not bad in my opinion, but it’s a never-ending sim game, which really isn’t my favourite type of genre. The game involves creating structures on a plot of land, and managing your resources so that you can lure, capture, and breed Piñatas. They’re animals… but you can also smash them open to get candy. It’s quirky. Some of the Piñatas are predatory in nature, so it can be tricky to collect them all.

I… really don’t hold any sort of fascination for completing collections… and there isn’t a defined “end point” in this game… so the idea of playing until I collected every different type of Piñata just held no appeal to me. I played for a couple of hours, and my 2 year old loved the colours and telling me what to do, but I just can’t see myself ever wanting to pick this game up again.

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[insert deep breath here]

It was a great year! Here’s to many more great games in 2018!