Tau's Top 5 Games of 2013!

Since it's new years eve, it's time for a top 5 countdown!

So, the requirement for being added to this list is that the game came out in 2013 AND I played it to completion.  For that reason, I'm warning you right now, The Last of Us, GTA5 and Bioshock Infinite are not on this list.  I played TLoU and Bioshock except I didn't beat TLoU and Bioshock was a piece of crap....and I didn't beat that either.  GTA5 came out just as I was leaving Sweden for Japan, so I've not had a chance to play it yet, I'm sure it's very good, Rockstar know what they are doing.

ANYWAY! HERE WE GO!

Game #5: Super Monster Ate My Condo

Whoa now? for serious? A mobile game in a top 5?! If you don't like that then I suggest you actually go and give the game a go before slagging it off, it's actually really good.

Super Monster Ate My Condo is a match 3 puzzle game where you have to match condos to make more condos in order to make even more condos to make more and more points.  It's simple yet there is some depth to be found in the form of boosts and managing the bonuses that can be triggered via the monsters on the edge of the screen.  It also has a coin system that is in place for Adult Swim to make money off this free to play title, but you get so many coins per normal game that I never once had to use it and the boosts cost so little you'll never have to "grind" coins to get high scores.

Also the world leader board gives me a reason to keep going back and try and crawl my way up bit by bit.  It's a really fun game and it costs absolutely nothing, so you have no excuse not to at least TRY this little mobile gem.  I've not really been this addicted to a puzzler since Tetris.

Game #4: Rouge Legacy

I like rougelikes and while this is what a lot of the rougelike hardcore would call an "entry level" rougelike, it doesn't stop it from being fun as all hell.  Pick a knight, collect gold, kill enemies, die, start over with a new knight, rinse and repeat until you beat all the bosses.  Then once you've done that, do it again....but HARDER, and then again....BUT HARDER STILL.

The game has an expansive tree of upgrades for your knights and an equipment/rune system that will change the way you play, but the coolest aspect of this game can be found on the character select screen.  Each knight is given a trait (Read: Disability) which can range from something silly like the whole game playing black and white to something super obnoxious like the whole game being turned upside down.  Also the fact that you are never allowed to choose the class of your heir and are just given 3 at random every time means that you kind of have to adjust your play style every round, which keeps things fun and interesting.

It's also great to look at with really nice visuals and it's sound design is pretty good too.  Available on Steam for a pretty affordable price, it's worth every penny you end up dropping for this great little game.

Game #3: Don't Starve

I've heard some people compare Don't Starve to Minecraft, but it's nothing like Minecraft so those people need a bit of a slap.

Don't starve is KIND of a rougelike but not really.  It's a rougelike in the sense that the world is random every time and it has perma death, but it's more of a survival game than a "get to the end of the dungeon in one go" game.

You fire up the game, pick a character and then are dropped into a big horrible world full of god knows what trying to kill you.  On top of having to survive that, you have to make sure that you collect resources and food to keep yourself alive and allow you to explore further and further through your randomly generated island of madness.  There's lots to do, lots to see and plenty of mystery when you're new and it can really draw you in and keep you playing for hours and hours.

I've not played any of Don't Starve for a good while now due to trying to work my way feverishly through my backlog, but last time I played it was being updated quite frequently, so with a stream of new content coming from the developer and an active modding community Don't Starve has the potential to give you months and months, if not years of entertainment.

Game #2: Code of Joker

Sorry folks, but my second favourite game of this year is a Japan only arcade game, so if you want to play this one you might want to book a plane ticket.

Code of Joker is a little bit hard to describe but the way I put it forward to my friends is "imagine if you took Yu-Gi-Oh, Magic the Gathering and the Pokemon trading card game and smashed them all together" and that about sums the whole thing up.

While it's a little expensive at 300 Yen per play, matches do tend to last a while and you are given more and more cards every time.  Also you don't need to carry a deck around with you since it is kept on a nice little stat card that you register when you put in your first credit.

There's a large number of cards so there is plenty of room to tailor a strategy that suits you and on top of that you get to pick one character out of a pool of about....7...I think...each with their own unique power that may change the tide of a duel if it's not going so well for you.

Couple that with every single Code of Joker machine being hooked up to an internet connection so that you can play anyone in Japan from any game centre in the country and it makes for a fun time.  It's a shame this kind of coin-op innovation isn't more readily available in western countries.

GAME NUMBER 1! Metal Gear Rising AND Killer Is Dead

The memory of playing these 2 games are the ones that have stuck with me and these are the two games I remember having the most fun with this year (except Deadly Premonition but that wasn't 2013) however I can't decide which one I liked more, so they both win.  If you don't like 2 games winning a joint first then shut up and make your own damn list.

Let's start with MGR, a fast paced character action game with an absolutely batshit crazy plot and solid hacky slashy game play with a few gimmicks that made it feel kind of fresh.  Sure, it was kind of short but if it was any longer than those gimmicks I just mentioned would start to feel very tired; it was JUST the right length but the general shortness of the game didn't stop me from getting hours and hours of playtime out of it.  There are higher difficulty settings, a challenge room and if you're like me you'll replay the shit out of it for mission rankings so being able to blast through the game in a pretty short period of time is actually pretty good for a game like this, it has the content to back it up.

Then there is Killer is Dead, a game in the same genre developed by the industries resident nutjob Suda51.  The game follows a suave as all hell main character as he goes around assassinating people and uncovering his dark past.  While the game play didn't FEEL quite as deep as MGR, it was just as satisfying.  Overblown visual effects, satisfying sound design as crazy as fuck levels and bosses made for a truly memorable game.  It kind of felt like a strange hybrid between Killer7 and No More Heroes in a way and how can you go wrong with a mix like that?

HONOURABLE MENTION: Papers, Please

I wanted to put this game somewhere on the actual list but since the game play really doesn't amount to much more than spot the difference then I couldn't really bring myself to do it.  That said, Papers, Please is easily one of the best indie games I've ever played and it's a title I would thoroughly recommend to absolutely anyone.

On the surface, Papers, Please sounds like one of the most boring games that could possibly have ever been made.  You play as a border control inspector for the country of Arstotzka and it is up to you to check the documents of the various immigrants trying to enter your country.  For each in game day you are given a set of rules and you must follow these rules to the letter or lose whatever little money that you have left to support your family.

While you are checking documents you find yourself caught up in a number of different little story lines, some big and some small and all of them are quite interesting.  From your little booth you not only manage to get caught up in some political espionage (if you choose to do so) but you also play a key role in a lot of peoples lives since it is ultimately up to you if their stories can continue or not.  At some points in the game the decision between entry or denial is the same thing as life or death but the games overall setup makes it very hard to want to do the right thing.  For such a simple idea with such boring sounding game play, it manages to be rather powerful.

Also I really enjoyed checking documents and coming down on arsebags trying to cheat their way into my country.  GLORY TO ARSTOTZKA!

Anyway that's the end of the list, I hope you enjoyed it and maybe discovered a new game or two that's worth playing.  If you're that upset about the big 3 AAA games of the year not being on there well don't worry, I'll be posting up my thoughts on them when I get round to beating/playing them.

Happy new year everybody! Let's hope 2014 brings us even more great games.

Don't Lock the Difficulty

A while ago you may remember me having a bit of a gush about Metal Gear Rising, I thought it was great.  If you don't remember me having a gush about Rising, have a flick through the archive and dig out my "review".

Anyway, Rising, along with many other games did something that I really can't fucking stand.  In the game there are 5 difficulty levels.  Easy, Normal, Hard, Very Hard and Revengeance.  I'm not trying to sound big or anything like that, but if you're like me then you want the biggest challenge you can get out of a game, so I always play on the hardest settings when possible.  However Rising doesn't let me do that, I have to beat the game fucking TWICE to unlock revengeance mode. 

I just want to challenge myself with the toughest thing that game has to offer, why does the game feel the need to make me prove my worth before it'll even let me fucking try.  That said though, Rising is a bad example because it turns out you can put in the Konami code to unlock them all from the start, but who's going to go looking for cheat codes on a first playthrough?! It's still bullshit.

Still, Rising isn't the only game that does this whole locked difficulty thing, in fact most games do and I seriously wish they would fucking stop.  Games today are pretty fucking easy to begin with, so don't make me play through the snoozefest easy modes before I can even attempt what sorry excuse for a hard mode you came up with.

Bottom line, make all difficulties available from the start of the goddamn game! No cheat codes! No having to play the game multiple times! No any other bullshit you can think of to make me work for bullshit that should be there anyway!  Just let me play the game on the difficulty I want to play it at, arsebag.

Stop HDing Things

You know I don't really have a problem with HD collections, at least not most of them.  It's sort of nice to be able to get one disc and have all the Devil May Cry games available so that I don't have to change discs if I want to play DMC 1 instead of DMC 3 for example.

That said, I do think they are a little bit unneeded.  It's not like I was sat here thinking "oh, Shadow of the Colossus is a really good game but it looks like shit and I can't play it anymore".  The game looks fine on the PS2, and playing it now is just as much fun as playing it when it first came out.  Sure the HD collection made it look a bit nicer but at the end of the day it's still the same fucking game.

It's not like all HD collections have been successful either, with Silent Hill basically ruining whatever legacy Silent Hill 2 and 3 had by convincing all new users that the game is a load of arse.  Some HD collections even seem a little pointless, like God of War since it's not like original PS2 copies of those games are hard to find.

Well the reason I'm moaning so much about HD releases is because I'd rather see the money spent on that put into something new.  One of my biggest problems with this industry is that there are too many sequels to things and some things are getting a little stale.  Instead of pumping money into HD remakes of old games, why not try and create a new IP.  Something new and exciting that we can all point and go "holy shit look at that!" instead of "oh....another Assassins Creed" or "oh.....more Call of Duty"

Even something like Metal Gear Rising would be fine where your making a new game within an established series universe.  We get more of the story and characters we like but a fresh new way to play with them, which at least prevents me from being bored.

Basically, money should be going towards new stuff, not making old stuff prettier.  Give me something new and not just an up scaled version of a game I played less than 10 years ago, goddamn it.

Metal Gear Rising Revengeance

I already mentioned this once as the game that basically restored my love for gaming after 2012 ended up being so incredibly shitty, well now I'm going to gush about it!

So to start, I did a google search on the world revengeance, because I was convinced that was just made up to sound cool, but it is actually a thing, so straight off the bat I'm learning new things by playing this game.

Anyway, silly words aside, it's really quite hard to find a single word to describe Metal Gear Rising.  The best thing I can come up with is "Radical", but even then this games level of rad are so high that it doesn't really do it justice.

So I don't really know where to start with this "review", so lets start at the plot.  The game starts out with some group trying to destabilise stuff in order to cause war because war generates money for Private Military Corps and they like that.  Then it turns into a plot around child organ harvesting and shit gets really crazy from there.  But for the first time ever I didn't really give a flying fuck about the story in a Metal Gear game.  It's not bad by any stretch, but when there is all this high octane hacking and slashing going on, I just want to concentrate on that.

Which brings me to the game play, oh lord is it good.  The core game play revolves around hacking and slashing enemies until they die and if you have played anything like Bayonetta or Devil May Cry, you can expect a combat system that's just as fun and rewarding.  The thing that everyone knows about though is the games "Blade Mode", where you are basically free to cut anything in any way and this is used to harvest spinal cords for healing yourself or killing big enemies.  This is also a really fun mechanic and doesn't interrupt the flow of game play.

Now for the blocking, because I've seen a lot of people complain about the blocking.  There is no dedicated block in Metal Gear Rising and instead we are given a parry which is performed by pressing forward towards an enemy and doing a light attack.  The parry comes in two flavors which is a standard parry which prevents damage, and a perfect parry which prevents damage and counters.  I saw a lot of people saying things like "it's not well explained" or "it's too hard to perform".  Please ignore these people because they are just bad at the game since the window for just pulling off basic blocks is huge and the game explains the controls behind a parry right away in a VR mission AND gives you plenty of time to practice.

Anyway, for all my griping about people slagging off the parry system, I'm not saying this game is perfect.  The final few chapters feel a little bit rushed and have very little length and it's a bit of a shame the second half of the game wasn't a little more fleshed out.  Also there are some quick time events and while they aren't too bad I'd still prefer it if they weren't there.  Also the stealth segments of the game are fucking crap and while they aren't mandatory it feels that they were shoehorned in there just because it's a Metal Gear game. They are incredibly out of place when just slicing up dudes is just as, if not more effective than sneaking.

Finally the length, I'll admit it is a little on the short side with my total playtime being six and a half hours on hard mode, but that's not counting cut scene time and I'm pretty sure failed attempts aren't included in the total time either.  That said the game is full of replay value, because my six and a half hours of playtime were filled with pretty crap grades, so I want to go back and improve my skills.  On top of that, beating the game unlocks another difficulty and doing it again unlocks an even harder one.  On top of THAT there are 20 VR Missions which task you with killing dudes as fast as you can for a big gold star.  Finally on top of THAT there are 20 collectable thingies to get throughout the game which only give stupid shit like concept art but are hard to find and for a completionist like myself, add some more replay value to the game.

So the TL;DR version of this entire post is, game is awesome go play it!  If you're a fan of action games like this who were left wanting after DmC, this will perk you right up.  If you aren't a fan, go play it anyway and you will be soon enough.

My Faith is Being Restored!

I'm not going to lie to you here, 2012 was a shitty year for gaming, a REALLY shitty year.

There were a few good releases but generally speaking it was full to bursting of disappointment, shit games and stuff being ruined by idiots.  It got to the point where I was moaning and griping about so much stuff that a good portion of my friends started saying stuff like "maybe you just hate video games now" and other such crap.

Deep down I was sort of worried that was true as well, all I was ever really doing was complaining, but then a couple of days ago it happened....

...I started playing Metal Gear Rising.

Holy shit I've not had this much fun with a video game for a long LONG fucking time.  I shall "review" it properly at a later date but the long and short of it is that so far, I've been having so much fun with it that any problems I do have with it I am able to completely ignore.  At least for now.

Also if you look back through the recent posts there have been quite a few "holy shit check this upcoming game out!" posts, so all in all I think the video games are about ready to stop sucking and making me upset and start delivering on the fun again.

It's a shame that there are still so many companies treating people like dicks though....but one step at a time.