Board 8 > Exdeath Plays Every Game in the GotD 2020 Contest Part 2 (ft FO:NV, Ghost Trick)

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Oh yeah if you got through World 4 that easily you should be fine. You're definitely way better than I was at the game.

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My write-up there might understate how much trouble I had with certain levels in world 4, to be fair. There were definitely parts that had me swearing at my screen, I'll admit. I remember there was another level besides the two I mentioned that really gave me a hard time, I think it was 4-16, where there are two of those eye laser things on opposite sides of the map. I actually had to look up how to do it right.

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Alright, I finished Super Meat Boy. The last full-length world is called Rapture and is set after Dr. Fetus starts nuclear war to try and get rid of Meat Boy. I think that, like World 4, it's quite tough but the difficulty is sort of concentrated among a few particular levels. I had a lot of trouble with one where there's an invincible flying guy (he kind of reminds me of the angry sun from Mario 2) who chases you throughout a long level where you need to run back and forth across the full length of the stage gathering keys. The boss is a trio of giant earthworms that you have to bait into leaping from their burrows into saws. It took me a little while to figure out how to get them to kill themselves effectively, but it wasn't too bad after that.

Once Rapture is done with, you move onto The End, which is just five levels, but they're five long, rough levels. Longer stages in this game can be pretty demoralizing, since it's easy to make it most of the way through the stage, make one little slip-up, and then have to start over. The first, second, and last stages of The End in particular drove me crazy, and the final battle against Dr. Fetus, which is really just a normal level where Dr. Fetus is on the screen but he move so slowly that he's not really relevant, was also really hard. I used up all the patience I had for slowly building muscle memory to get through narrow gaps between saws and all that kind of jazz just beating those last few levels, so I've decided not to go back for optional goodies or play the bonus post-game world, Cotton Alley.

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Yeah that's actually pretty impressive to have beaten it already. It took me a couple months of stopping and starting to actually beat it. The final boss was on the verge of being just too much for me. I was already having a hard time with the first phase and when I was looking for strategies online, I discovered there was a second phase.

I literally ended up having to set aside a whole day just to do it. Gotta say though definitely one of the most rewarding gaming experiences of my life.

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BetrayedTangy posted...

I was already having a hard time with the first phase and when I was looking for strategies online, I discovered there was a second phase.

I think the way you approached the game is smart. I think I would've enjoyed it more if I had taken it more slowly, I just wanted to beat it right away because I'm already behind pace to finish the project in five years. Yeah, I felt a definite sense of relief when I beat Dr. Fetus only to be mortified when I found out there was an escape sequence afterward. I really would've liked to turn the game off and take a break at that point, but I didn't want to go through the first part again.

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Final Analysis: Super Meat Boy
What I Thought of Super Meat Boy: Good core mechanics, annoying level design
Would I Play Meat Boy Again? Not for a long time.
Did it deserve to lose round 2? I'd say it's debatable.

One of my favorite pieces of level design comes right at the start of Donkey Kong Country's "Vulture Culture," the first level of its third world. There's a barrel that will shoot you into a stationary vulture. It's there to introduce you to the way DK bounces off enemies when fired from a barrel, in an environment where you can't possibly mess it up - and that's the mechanic that the entire level is based around. I remember playing it recently and thinking of how a modern game might have paused for a long tutorial on a mechanic like that. Donkey Kong achieved in seconds what an approach like that might take a few minutes to accomplish.

Super Meat Boy knows the same trick. It's really good about dedicating short levels to quickly and seamlessly introduce its new mechanics, before it ramps them up to terrifying levels of mechanical demand. Immediacy is one of its great overall strengths: restarts are almost instant, for example, and every level is immediately followed by the next without needing to return to the world map. Even though VVVVVV beat it to the punch in some ways, it's one of the pioneering games in this genre of super-hard indie platformers and understands how to make them work. It's not like I Wanna Be the Guy where it throws random untelegraphed instant-kills at you all the time: if you die in Super Meat Boy, it's because you made a mistake.

Platformers are such a well-explored genre by now that it's hard to make one that stands out. VVVVVV's solution to that problem was its gravity-shifting concept, but Meat Boy manages to distinguish itself while remaining much closer to standard platforming. Its primary mechanics are an ultra-horizontal long jump and a sort of slippery wall climbing, which pass the test of being inherently fun to play with and also allow the amount of depth and variation necessary to last a game's worth of time. The presentation is good too - the blood stains Meat Boy leaves in a trail behind him mark where you went on previous attempts (and what killed you,) for instance, which helps create the intended feeling of satisfaction when you finally win. The game's Newground-native aesthetic feels a little immature, but still has its own charm, and the music is good.

But you know what, for all that it does right, I can't honestly say I enjoyed Meat Boy much. Every man has to decide for himself where the line between a well-balanced challenge and a game that's just kind of annoying lies. For me, Meat Boy crosses it. My impression of a lot of the level design was that Edmund Macmillan would make a good, creative level for a high-difficulty platformer - and then add one or two more hazards, tipping the level over to the point of being too much. The perfect example of this, for me, is in the final battle against Dr. Fetus. There are giant walls of saws both behind and in front of you, with no gaps to move through. You have to wait until the wall ahead of you moves forward, but get through before the one behind catches up. The one behind you is fine. It makes sense to put in a sort of time limit for the tense final battle, but I would argue that the level would only be improved if the one in front of you were removed. After failing the level for the twentieth time, it's not much fun to have to sit around and wait for the damn thing to move before you can try the hard parts of the stage again.

Personally, I don't like having to make near pixel-perfect jumps through the gaps between two closely-placed saws all that much. A lot of the later levels require you to do that like twelve times in a row, and start from the beginning if you mess up so much as once. I start to get tired, and angry, before I've come anywhere near building up the muscle memory required to actually complete the harder levels, and when I finally did, my feeling wasn't triumph or satisfaction so much as relief. I would think "Thank God I don't have to play that stupid level any more." When I finished the game, I thought something similar.


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And with that, I can go onto the next game, which in line with my extra games schedule will be:

God of War II
Release Date: March 13, 2007
Playing on: PS3
Previous Experience with God of War II: None
Expectations for God of War II: An improved version of God of War 1.

Before I started this project, I had zero experience with the whole "hack and slash" genre that originated with games like Devil May Cry and the Xbox Ninja Gaiden. God of War is kind of a westernization and perhaps a bit of a simplification of that genre. It might have been the introduction to hack and slash for a lot of American gamers, and if it hadn't been for Bayonetta it would have served that purpose for me as well.

That being the case, it was probably a little over-ambitious of me to play the first GoW on Hard mode. I'll be dropping down to normal for its sequel, with the hope that it will speed up my progress a little bit. But other than chickening out on the game's real difficulty, I don't know if there's a lot to say about this game that I didn't say about the first. I didn't love the original God of War by any means, but there were some parts I liked quite a bit, especially the monster boss fights. I'm hoping there will be a few more of those in the second game, but otherwise I'm only expecting a more polished version of the same thing.

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Yeah I'd say Super Meat Boy has the best gameplay of 2010, but the difficulty tanks it in my rankings, hence the 4th place.

Also I know it's a while off, but Cuphead does the insanely difficult platformer thing so much better.

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BetrayedTangy posted...

Yeah I'd say Super Meat Boy has the best gameplay of 2010, but the difficulty tanks it in my rankings, hence the 4th place.

Also I know it's a while off, but Cuphead does the insanely difficult platformer thing so much better.

Yeah, I definitely agree that Cuphead is a big improvement. I guess Meat Boy is one of the milestones in the lineage of the same type of game as Cuphead, but to be fair to Meat Boy it was done by two guys while Cuphead had quite a large team behind it in comparison.

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I played the first little bit of God of War II - essentially what constitutes the first level. Kratos is the God of War these days but he still feels very angry because the Gods didn't stop his nightmares about his wife and daughter, so he's trying to work through it by commanding a Spartan army to attack other Greek cities. Athena, meanwhile, wants him to stop being such a dick, so she and some other gods take away a bit of his power, shrinking him back to human size, and then bring the Colossus of Rhodes to life to fight him. Similar to the Hydra in the first game, it hounds you throughout the level with three or four shorter fights against it. It makes for a decent setpiece. You finish the colossus off by going inside it and draining its life force with a sword called the Blade of Olympus, which Zeus gives you. You're also fully powered-up from the first game in this level including a maxed-out Poseidon's wrath, and Kratos is also rocking a nice set of armor. Of course, like any game where you start off kitted out, you lose it all right away, in this case when Kratos puts his own godly powers into the Blade of Olympus.

Rather comically, he Colossus' hand falls and crushes him in the middle of his posturing after he kills it. Since he put his God powers in the sword, that mortally wounds him (it also makes all his clothes fall off for some reason.) Naturally, it was all a trick by Zeus, who also doesn't approve of Kratos' irresponsible God behavior. You have a little fight against him while controlling an injured Kratos with super slow moves, lose, and fall down into Hades, but you climb out in about five seconds. Kratos vows further revenge against the Gods, but someone on Olympus sends a Pegasus to help him with that. He'd better hope it's not another trick.

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Played a little more tonight. So Gaia, the personification of the Earth from whom all the gods and titans are descended, is helping Kratos in this game. She's upset with Zeus for going to war with the Titans. It used to be Zeus who apparently gave you the power to save in the first game, but I guess Gaia can take over such duties.

The Pegasus has flying levels attached to it, where Kratos cuts up some Gryphons as he travels. They reduce the number of attacks and combos similar to the climbing combat but you do have access to dodge moves and a boost. He's traveling to an island to find the sisters of fate (who, if you've seen Disney's Hercules, are the three girls who cut the threads of people's lives, though I've always heard them called just "the fates,") so that they can send him back in time to before Zeus betrayed and killed him. Partway there, though, the Pegasus gets crushed by the hand of an ice giant while Kratos is able to bail safely. The Pegasus is okay, it has no broken bones or anything, but Kratos has to get it out from under the big hand by hitting it while in his Rage of the... Titans mode. He doesn't have that yet, so he has to go on a little adventure nearby, where he meets Prometheus, who is being eternally tortured for helping humanity. I think it's a good idea to bring up this story since they're trying to re-establish Zeus as a villain and it does make him seem kind of nutty. I didn't know this until now, but apparently in Greek tradition Heracles eventually freed Prometheus but the original sources that tell what happened next have been lost. Since God of War is a very edgy game, the best Kratos can do is kill the guy, which he has to retrieve a bow power up to manage. Functionally, the bow is identical to the lightning toss move from the first game. There's a sort of mini boss fight against the ice titan's head where you put both his eyes out but don't actually kill him.

After Kratos rescues his horse and they go through another flight section, you wind up on the Island proper, which was apparently built to prevent people from getting to the Fates. I expect it will be where I spend most of the remainder of the game, similar to the temple in God of War 1. So far, although I expected a very similar game to the first, I'm surprised by just how similar it actually is. It's basically the exact same game with new levels. I got reintroduced to the minotaurs and gorgon enemies from the last game, as well as the cerberus-like dogs. I think the only new random enemy I've encountered so far is a little piggy that the Cyclops can kill and throw at you. Kratos can also kill the pigs with one throw.

There have been two human bosses, the first being Theseus, which I thought was a fine boss in its first phase, where he just fights you hand to hand, but stopped making any sense in the second phase where he climbs up out of reach and you have to finish him with the bow. He starts spawning minotaurs in this phase, which means that even if you're weakened you can heal back to full off them. The second boss fight is against the ghost of the barbarian that Kratos needed Ares' help to kill back in the day. You get his hammer after you win, but it's heavy and slow so it doesn't seem like a very useful weapon. The boss fights were the highlight of the first game for me, so even though these ones haven't been as impressive as the minotaur boss from the first game I am glad they're here. So far, Normal difficulty is probably easier than I would like.

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Last night I made a little more progress. This game's major new mechanic is an ability that slows down time, which you can only use when there's a glowing statue nearby. It's mainly used in the puzzles but there are a couple of combat arenas where it's available, and it's quite game-breaking in fights. When I started playing I was just outside an area where there are some Greek soldiers running around getting killed by the monsters. They ask Kratos for help but they're invariably dead by the time he gets to them, except one guy who asks you to save Jason (as in "and the Argonauts, I imagine) and then Kratos uses his still-living body to jam up a machine so he can move onto the next room, where Jason is getting used as a chew-toy by a dog miniboss, which actually gave me the most trouble out of anything in this game so far. Once it's dead you retrieve a fancy armlet that lets you deflect projectiles and beam attacks and gives you a power attack after you block. It's mostly used for puzzles as well but it is handy against the gorgon enemies and the upcoming boss fight against a fat Medusa. I liked that boss for the most part, with the only real flaw in its design being that it will sometimes run away and try to turn you to stone, but because the petrification doesn't deal damage on its own and it's too slow to shatter you there's no punishment if you fail to avoid it. Kratos takes the fat Medusa's head so that he can use the exact same stone gaze powerup from the first game.

I still think it was the right call to go down to normal difficulty, but I'd say I find it too easy. It seems like I can mostly do anything in just about any fight and still get by. You can win battles even if you get hit by every enemy attack. I guess I'd have been happy if there were a difficulty between normal and hard.

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God of War II is great! Storytelling aside perhaps.

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Got in a short session today. Kratos bumps into Perseus, who I remember learning about in high school. I can't remember if he ever met the Fates, but he did run into the three sisters who had to share one eye, which got combined with the Fates in Disney's Hercules. Anyway, in God of War he's a huge dick who picks a fight with Kratos for no real reason. At first he's invisible and fighting you in a pool of water, so you have to track him down by watching the splashes he makes as he walks around. I like that idea to some extent, but it makes it hard to tell when he's about to attack which is important for this combat system. Kratos finishes him off and takes his shield to use for a puzzle. He meets Icarus a little bit further on. I imagine most people know the story of Icarus - it's about Hubris. Icarus thinks he can fly up to the sun and ends up falling to his death. Anyway, in God of War Icarus is a huge dick who picks a fight with Kratos for no real reason. It's kind of like an extended quick time even where you just mash square to punch him and then do a couple QTEs to dodge his attacks. Kratos finishes him off and takes his wings, which give him a glide upgrade, but in the process of fighting him he falls down to the bottom of the world where Atlas is holding everything up. That's where I stopped for now. I also picked up a second spear sub-weapon. It seems better than the hammer but I don't think I'll use it much.

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Things were going smoothly in Civilization, and then came the modern era. It started innocently enough - I of course picked the Freedom ideology and set to building the Statue of Liberty in Istanbul. I began to notice Oda Nobunaga's attitude turning sour, but didn't think much of it until suddenly, WAR. Not with me, but with Brazil to his west, but I was still concerned since Brazil and I enjoyed a good trade relationship. With my dominant spot in the World Congress (by this point I was allies with almost all of the city-states) I proposed an embargo of Japan, and sure enough, a few turns later they had somehow negotiated a peace. We passed the embargo anyway just to be sure.

I was relieved that things settled down, but more trouble was brewing. My spy informed me that Maria Theresa was marshalling forces for an attack. In my foolishness, I assumed she had her sights set on America to her north. After all, I saw hardly any activity on our border, and why would she attack me now that we had put aside our differences and become trade partners? Well, I suspect the tipping point was that she had chosen Autocracy after I had already made Freedom the world ideology. Whatever the reason, she declared war on me, and a wave of hussars bore down on me from the northeast.

I was in a tight spot. I had neglected to build up a defense force - what little I had were assorted gifts from city-states, mainly cannons and gatling guns with a few untrained knights and lancers. I formed a barrier around my two cities, but just looking at it it was obvious that she outnumbered me, and my foreign allies seemed completely uninterested in helping. After a turn of fighting, my forces barely held on, and things were looking grim... but wait. I had a chance to choose a new Freedom tenet, and right there I saw Volunteer Army, which instantly gave me 6 Foreign Legion units - and with my vast funds, I was able to instantly upgrade them to modern Infantry. They crushed the enemy's frontline like it was nothing, which seemed to give Washington the hint that it would be a good idea for him to declare war on Austria as well. At that point, Theresa had the good sense to offer her surrender, but I wasn't satisfied. To the east was her city of Graz, which had long been a thorn in my side, getting right in the way of my land route to Buenos Aires. I marched my forces over to Graz and in two turns captured the city. Then I demanded her surrender, this time with a nice golden tribute for the trouble.

Anyway, it looks like my control over the World Congress is pretty airtight, so barring any more surprises I should be right in line for a diplomatic victory.

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Well, that didn't take long. The other Civs did try ganging up on Brazil, my last loyal ally, but it was too late for them. I was allies with every single city-state, and researching globalization put me at a cool 34 delegates, with 32 required for victory.

It's safe to say I've been bitten by the Civilization bug, and I promise I will return to the game in the future, but now it's about time I start my journey into New Vegas...

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I hope everyone had a good Christmas, or other holiday. I spent most of the last few days with family, but yesterday I got home with enough time to play God of War.

The section on Atlas' face is mostly a platforming tutorial based on the Icarus Wings, which are basically the same as the glide from Spyro. Atlas gets angry when he sees Kratos, because he apparently screwed him over last time they met. Either I'm forgetting something from the first game or that happened off-screen between games. Kratos persuades him to let bygones be bygones by promising to kill Zeus and Atlas gives him a ground-shaking stomp attack for his final spell. It's the most distinct from its GoW 1 counterpart of all the spells you get in this game, but it's similar to the Army of Hades in that it's essentially a "fuck you, I win" button. I use it a lot, and even fully upgraded it. It's especially handy in some of the more troublesome sections of the mid to late game, like one where you have to protect a translator and another where you have to push a statue while infinitely-spawning enemies harass you, which is just as frustrating as it was in the first game. There's a 2D battle in a pitch black area against a guy who turns out to be one of Kratos' old Spartan soldiers and breaks the bad news that Zeus wrecked the city. Then Kratos uses his corpse to weigh down a switch while he fights a big tentacle monster. That boss fight was a little disappointing for me. It's kind of a puzzle battle rather than a tough test of your skill in the combat.

After that's done, Kratos finally makes it to the Temple of the Fates, which I assume marks the last stretch of the game. Hopefully I'll be able to finish it up before tomorrow.

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Gall posted...

It's safe to say I've been bitten by the Civilization bug, and I promise I will return to the game in the future, but now it's about time I start my journey into New Vegas...

That was pretty good improvisation, to use the Volunteer Army policy like that. As you go up to higher difficulties you'll have to emphasize armies more and more, even if it's only to dissuade the AI from attacking. No matter how angry they are with you, they won't declare war if your army is a lot bigger. I think part of the design intention behind ideologies was for them to cause conflicts in the later game. A lot of the time, you can be on good terms with someone for a long time only to get denounced the second they pick an ideology besides yours. Have fun with New Vegas, and remember to put points into lockpick!

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The Temple of the Fates really is the last stretch of God of War II. There was one little puzzle section left when I started today, followed by what is essentially the game's final boss rush. First up, the Fates. God of War II portrays two of the sisters as pretty close to being human women and the third is closer to an eldritch abomination, though more specifically it resembles the Broodmothers from Dragon Age. It's a giant mound of grey flesh covered in small arms and big breasts. I couldn't tell you which of the three sisters that's supposed to be. They all look pretty similar in the old Greek depictions I've seen of them.

You fight the two "normal looking" fates first, starting with Lachesis, who is basically a normal boss fight. You can dodge some of her attacks by grappling onto four hooks throughout the arena. A lot of her attacks can be deflected. Later on she starts flying and you have to grapple and then glide to hit her. It's not bad. I like this game best when it's about learning enemy attack patterns and playing the combat correctly, which this boss fight satisfies.

After a while Lachesis is joined by one of her sisters, who brings Kratos back to the final boss fight from the first game and fights him on top of the giant statue-sword that he killed Ares with. This phase is kind of dumb. It reminds me a little bit of the Moonlight Butterfly from Dark Souls, where you're standing on a bridge fighting a flying enemy that's out of reach most of the time. Bringing a spell like Soul Arrow makes the Butterfly a lot easier, and likewise I mostly just plugged away at this boss with my bow. The big problem with it is that low-level enemies are constantly spawning and you can kill them for health and mana. It's basically impossible to lose even if you eat every single attack because you can always just snack on the mooks for a little extra HP. Once that part's over with, you go back to the initial boss fight with Lachesis except her sister peeks out through a mirror every now and then and you have to smack her until she goes away. Pretty good boss fight.

There's a long hallway section where you fight normal enemies for the last time, and then you go up against the broodmother Sister of Fate. She's another one of those puzzle boss hybrids like the tentacle monster, which I still don't really like. You have to beat up her arms so that they sit still long enough for you to mess with machinery without her interrupting the animation with her attacks, but they don't stay down all that long, so as you're figuring out the correct process you have to repeatedly knock her out and it gets a little annoying. It's also just not really challenging and doesn't make use of the core mechanics.

With the Fates out of the way, Kratos can commandeer their loom and use it to travel back in time and fight Zeus with the Blade of Olympus. The first phase of this fight where Zeus is giant also doesn't make any sense from a game design perspective. He keeps summoning the siren enemies and occasionally attacks you while your actual fight is against them. Not only is it lame to be dealing with regular enemies during the final boss, but every time you kill one and make it scream with the pre-animated takedown Zeus disgorges a large amount of health and mana, so it has the same problem as the sister on the bridge where getting hit doesn't actually matter. Spamming the Earth Shaker spell is the way to go in this fight. After every scream Zeus punches the ground and gives you a chance to cut up his hand. Eventually Kratos drains some of his God-power and turns him to human size and the actual fight begins. This phase is perfectly good. It's a little repetitive. You fight a bare-handed Zeus for a bit, then he steals the Blade of Olympus and fights you with that, you knock him out and drop a marble pillar on him, and then the whole process goes around again. He's actually more threatening with his fists than the sword, or so it seemed to me. He tries to throw lightning bolts at you sometimes and you can deflect them for health and mana, but it's a smaller and more balanced amount compared to the earlier fights. It ends with a little QTE section. Admittedly, I got taken off-guard by the circle mash at the end and had to repeat that part once.

Athena intervenes and saves Zeus' behind, getting herself impaled on the Blade of Olympus in the process. Kratos acts like he's sad and tells her he doesn't want to destroy Olympus, just Zeus, but as soon as she's dead he goes back in time to gather the Titans and attacks the mountain of the Gods, shouting about how much he's going to enjoy destroying Olympus. That's where God of War II leaves off.

Final Thoughts on GoW II in a moment.

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Final Analysis: God of War II
What I Thought of God of War II: Uninteresting game
Would I play it again? No
Did it deserve to lose round 1 (In GotD 2010?) Yes

If I were asked whether God of War II was better than the first game, I would say it definitely is, but my favorite part of either game is from 1. I had four major complaints at the end of God of War 1 and the second game addresses almost all of them to at least some extent, even the joking one I made about how the carvings on the temple walls in the first game omitted the miniaturized dicks that were universal to real Greek art. In particular, I was happy to see that there were a lot more boss fights than before. The two games are about equally as long, but while God of War 1 has three boss fights the second one must have over a dozen. With a couple of lackluster exceptions, those boss fights are easily the highlights of the game, pushing the mechanics to their furthest and delivering best on the over-the-top violent spectacle the games are so based around. But none of them quite measure up to that nightmare of a fight against the giant Minotaur from the first game. That one was long, challenging, and well-designed: it had loads of attacks, doesn't rely on gimmicks, and healed you between phases. That's the way to go for bosses in this series.

God of War II is maybe a 10 hour game. It's crazy that it took me about as long to play this as the 50+ hour Fallout: New Vegas. To be fair, part of the reason for that is that Christmas came in the middle of my playthrough and brought me away from my apartment for four days. The other reason, to be blunt, is that God of War II bored me to tears. It was hard to get started on a session because I was more interested in doing just about anything else, even the dishes.

There are a lot of different reasons for that, but the biggest one has to be the story. I guess it's fair to say that I'm more interested in video games as a medium of storytelling than anything else. I honestly think God of War and its sequel have two of the worst stories in professionally-made video games. They're down there with Kingdom Hearts. Reason #1 for that is Kratos, who just sucks. Look, I really like edgy boys. I was naturally drawn to Kaiba and Sasuke when I watched anime as a kid. I still love Shadow the Hedgehog. I watched Sephiroth's smash bros. trailer like ten times. I play as Yone in League of Legends. But even I think Kratos is the most repellent, uninteresting character in the entire world. People give Shadow a lot of well-deserved crap, but at least he has emotional connections to other characters like Rogue and can be persuaded to do good things. That shows a shred of complexity. Sephiroth works as a metaphor for sociopathic narcissism. Kratos is just pointlessly evil. He's a joyless, overaggressive loser who reacts the same way to absolutely everything. The only problem-solving skill he has is to torture other people until they do things for him. I'm not opposed to violence or depravity in stories, but I struggle to see either a point or entertainment value in that of Kratos. Part of it is that there's no use of contrast. When you never see Kratos do anything except violently murder people for poorly-explored reasons, it loses its impact.

Greek mythology might be over-used in video games, but it definitely is a rich source of ideas and themes. God of War completely fails to capitalize on that potential. It reduces everything in the entire Mythos to just another creature to kill. Heroes like Perseus and Theseus bear zero resemblance to their original characters and appear totally outside the context of their actual stories, because all God of War wants them to be is combat encounters who will pick a fight with Kratos. Making entities like the Fates and the Gods mortal drains much of their conceptual force. The point of the Fates is that they represent the inevitability of death. They're personifications of the inherent nature of reality, which is far beyond what humans are capable of opposing. That idea is evocative, but it's just not present in God of War II, where it turns out you can avert your fate if you just punch things hard enough. On top of that, what does the death of something like the Fates even mean? For the Greeks, a life ends when the Fates cut someone's thread. If they're not around to do that, has Kratos destroyed the concept of death itself? Evidently not, because Athena dies right afterward, but my point is that if you are going to kill off a personification of a concept like death, then that creates an opportunity to explore the consequences of such a thing. God of War just kind of doesn't bother with such trivialities. Speaking of death, what's with the underworld in these games? How come Kratos is the only one who can die and then just come out of Tartarus like it's nothing? Where does a God go when he dies? Is it the same underworld, and if so, why doesn't Zeus get Athena out like he did for Kratos? God, what would happen if Hades died? Would he be able to get himself back out using his own power as the Lord of the Dead? I have a feeling God of War III won't explore any of this, and I think that's in part because there just wasn't much thought put into the story.

But honestly, all of that would be fine if I was into the gameplay. If I can play Civ V for hundreds of hours then not every game needs an excellent story. To tell the truth, I was bored of the combat way before the end and I never thought the puzzles were any good. Yes this game has a little more enemy variety and more boss fights, but the enemy pool is still a little small, a lot of the monsters that do exist are the same ones from the first game, and it still uses that lame "trickle in" encounter design where you'll kill an enemy only for it to be replaced by another of the exact same enemy, which again makes things repetitive. The upgrade system in this doesn't make a lot of sense, especially when it comes to the sub-weapons. There's just no incentive to use them when you've had the Blades of Chaos for the whole game and they're the most logical choice to upgrade because the value of such upgrades doesn't rely on a resource like mana. It doesn't make much sense to upgrade the Barbarian Hammer when you can just use the Blades instead and upgrade your spells with the points you save, and there's certainly no reason to go swinging around your level 1 hammer all game.


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I wonder if these types of action games shouldn't just work like 2D fighting games, where it's just battle after battle with no exploration or puzzles in between, because everything outside of the combat always feels like such an afterthought. God of War II does have one cool thing going where a lot of the areas are interconnected. You'll go through one section and seamlessly come out in an area you visited before with a new power-up that lets you access a previously-locked area from there, like in a Metroidvania. It's sort of neat when it happens, but not really utilized by a game with few optional areas and no real reason to revisit old areas. When something new is unlocked by a power-up, it's always related to the critical path, at least as far as I found. The less said about the climbing combat the better, and the puzzles just kind of suck. I was so sick of pushing blocks (or corpses) onto switches to weigh them down by the time I was done with this damn game. And God help you when they try to combine the puzzles and the combat. It's a short list of things that are more obnoxious than slowly pushing a statue (to weigh down a switch, of course) while infinitely-spawning enemies harrass you. I also found that it was sometimes bad at explaining what the individual elements of its puzzles do. I remember one area where you have to quickly turn a crank to open a door before spikes come up from the floor and kill you, but because the door is so far in the background I couldn't tell what the crank was actually doing. Fundamentally, I think the puzzles just lack creativity, and then there are a couple areas that can just fuck off.

There came a point, though, where as much as I disliked the puzzles I felt even more fatigued when they wheeled out the combat instead. It's inevitable that a project like this will sometimes feel like a chore, and God of War II is a game I would've dropped if I wasn't playing it for this. I'm not sure I'm even willing to start God of War III. Apart from some of the graphics being pretty, I didn't like anything about this game.

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Alright, it's good to have that out of my system. Let's move onto the next game:

Call of Duty: Black Ops
Release Date: November 9, 2010
Playing on: PS3
Previous Experience with Blops: Might have played the Wii version
Expectations for Blops: Low

This is the last game of 2010 to make the contest, and the only representative of its series. If the bracket had been populated by the 128 best-selling games of the decade, though, I think there would've been 10 CoD games. I'm glad that's not the case, because I've never been fond of this series. It's been years since I played Call of Duty, come to think of it. The last time must have been when I was around 14 years old. I think it was the Wii version of Modern Warfare. By the time I got a PS3, I had decided the Call of Duty was not for my ears. I've never been a big FPS guy, or multiplayer guy, and I guess the aesthetic of Call of Duty is just a little dull. We can probably all agree that it's one of those iterative, commercial game franchises. You can't really accuse it of having much artistry (except perhaps at a few points - people stick up for some sequences from Call of Duty 4's singeplayer.) Its main value is as a way for young men to keep in touch and spend time together - I think my stepbrother (he's 14) still gets the new one every year and plays with friends all the time, talking over the voice chat. I appreciate that about it, but it's never served that purpose for me, because I have no friends.

I bought a used copy of the PS3 version for $9.99 the other day. I don't know if the servers even run for the PS3 version any more, but I don't think I'll venture into the multiplayer either way. That might be kind of unfair to the game, since multiplayer is what it's all about, really, but I did the same for Halo. I expect I'll find it to be a similar experience to Reach, but not as good. It's always possible it will surprise me.

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While I haven't played GoW 2018, I'm pretty sure it fixes just about all of your issues. So I'm looking forward to that.

With Black Ops coming up next, I highly recommend playing on Normal or even Easy. It'll make it super easy to plow through and the best way to experience CoD campaigns is just enjoying the power trip you get haha.

Also

Evillordexdeath posted...

They're down there with Kingdom Hearts.

:(

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Yeah, I've heard from a few different people, including some who don't like the old GoW games, that the 2018 one is much different and way better. I definitely think that giving Kratos some investment in his son's well-being will help me connect with the character a lot more. I'll take your suggestion and play Black Ops on normal. I am hoping to speed through it in just a few days so it should help with that.

As for Kingdom Hearts, I admit to having a soft spot for the first two games so maybe I just picked on that one because it's an easy/popular target. I like the combat, as overly-easy as it is, and the music is great (Simple and Clean even has good lyrics IMO,) but I do think the story is a good case study in how not to write video games or even just stories in general. It's just so convoluted and none of the characters really have much personality. Oddly I think The World Ends With You did have pretty lively and likable characters even though it's from a lot of the same people.

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Yeah I mostly just enjoy it for how ridiculous it is. I just love reacting to peoplen shitting on it. I admittedly have gotten pretty attached to the characters though, especially Roxas.

And yeah TWEWY is actually my favorite game. I think what helped it was it being a standalone game, because KH doesn't get that crazy until BBS, at least for me.

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I do think the dynamic between Roxas and Axel is one of the stronger points of KH's story. I guess I find Roxas on his own kind of dull, though. I agree with you that KH starts getting really convoluted after the first couple installments. The first game isn't too bad in that regard. Its problem is more that a lot of the dialog is really cheesy, especially when people start repeated the words "heart" and "darkness" every other word until the end. I think Sora and Riku are more compelling as characters at first when they're playing together on the island and trying to get away on the raft too. KHII takes things a lot further with the two different Ansems, Riku's body-changing shenanigans, and the introduction of nobodies as counterparts to other characters, but then it really goes off the rails after that, yeah. I'd definitely take TWEWY over Kingdom Hearts 1, so I think being standalone was part of it but that it also just turned out better. Maybe it had some more talented people on the writing staff or something, I don't know for sure. Here's hoping the upcoming sequel doesn't get too convoluted, at any rate. I had a really good time with the game too. I really like the soundtrack in that one also. It's quite unique.

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I don't remember Kratos being so insufferable in the first God of War but I can see where you're coming from.

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Oh yeah KH's writing is just corny and repetitive as hell, but that's part of the charm for me.

Also if I can find a cheap copy of Black Ops on PS3 I'd be happy to play some Zombies after you beat the campaign

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The God of War games are definitely gameplay before story, though II is the one I remember the the least story from. I don't mind Kratos, but never cared much for him either before the new one.

God of War (2018) is in every single way possible a vastly better game than its preceeding trilogy (and I enjoyed those!). It indeed vastly improved on everything you've complained about. Enjoyed Kratos as a character a lot in that game and I'm very excited to see him in the next one. That definitely wasn't what I looked forward to before.

Evillordexdeath posted...

I have a feeling God of War III won't explore any of this

Well...

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BetrayedTangy posted...

Also if I can find a cheap copy of Black Ops on PS3 I'd be happy to play some Zombies after you beat the campaign

Sure, that sounds fun. I might be a bit of a liability in Zombies though.

ctesjbuvf posted...

Well...

Interesting. It will be a nice surprise if I'm proven wrong on that one.

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I started Black Ops today, and played up until the first mission where you control a Russian guy instead of the American protagonist. Judging by the mission select screen, that's about halfway through the game, so if I don't finish it next time I play I'll try and at least close it out on the next session after that.

Black Ops tells the story of a guy named Mason, who, along with a couple of buddies, is part of the worst Black Ops squad in the entire world. You'd expect things like secrecy and plausible deniability to come into Black Ops, but these guys never complete a mission without at least a few city-wide firefights. The game employs a slightly unorthodox narrative structure: a shadowy organization of some kind are interrogating Mason, and most of the game's events are flashbacks he has during this process, which reveal a kind of "greatest hits" of his career. First he gets captured trying to assassinate Fidel Castro (and, incidentally, the history of American attempts on Castro's life is absolutely hilarious and definitely worth reading up on. The CIA came up with some really crazy ideas to kill Castro. A more mundane example is trying to blow him up with an explosive cigar, but there was also a scheme to defame him by making his beard fall out,) he makes friends with a Russian revolutionary in a gulag, and he's around for both the Cuban Missile Crisis and the latter days of the Vietnam war. The real purpose of this whole storytelling device, though, is that it lets the game skip everything that happens to Mason besides explosive shoot-outs.

I've been playing on normal, but I turned off the game's very powerful auto-aim in the first mission because even I thought that made things too easy. I've still managed to die quite a few times because I'm just that bad at games. I guess the defining trait of the gameplay is that it's very linear. Halo gives you a decent amount of agency in terms of how you approach challenges and objectives. You can leave behind the vehicles when it offers them for example, but Call of Duty always has an exact itinerary for you to follow: you have to go where it tells you when it tells you, and it's always giving you exact instructions on how to complete every objective. There are some things like C4 explosives that I think are only usable in context-sensitive situations where the game forces you to use them and in an exact location. Most fights are really big with tons of enemies as well as allied NPCs, so as long as Mason doesn't die the game will sort of slowly complete itself for you even if you aren't doing much to help. It does lead to a lot of exciting set-pieces, like harpooning a helicopter or mowing down Russian prison guards with a minigun, but they're always very scripted.

This is another one of those games that makes me feel old. Disorientation and sensory overload are the defining feelings it evokes for me. Between the flashbacks constantly getting interrupted with missions ending or moving to new areas really abruptly and the game only really having the one mood in the form of full-tilt hyperactive battles with things exploding everywhere, it's just a little much for me. At one point during a major firefight in Vietnam I caught myself thinking "I want to go to bed."

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Apparently Black Ops is considered one of the best COD games now, even if it was more contested on release. Also don't know if you care, but the lead is voiced by Sam "Avatar" Worthington.

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Black Ops is basically the last vestige of the time when CoD was critically very well regarded (not just high selling), and its the highest selling of all of them. It makes sense that that would be the one that makes it.

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The game's Vietnam setting does interest me somewhat, as does the voice cast.

Though that makes me remember that Kevin Spacey once had a voice role in a Call of Duty game.

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Yeah CoD4-BO1 was definitely their peak. Although I do have an affinity for BO2&3.

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Oh yeah I remember they got some well known actors for one of the zombie maps as well.

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Before the days of Press F to Pay Respects.

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Advanced Warfare is good actually! Probably the best of the post-peak CoD (4-Blops) pre-Battle Royale (Blops 4-current) era. Though Spaceys presence would make it awkward to revisit. I think CoD is kind of fascinating to look at the trajectory of because its been running on creative fumes since at least Advanced Warfare and really since Ghosts and sales have been trickling downwards, but it keeps having the occasional spike. Blops 4 and MW2019 were a lot better than what came before and breathed a bit of life back into the series, but Blops Cold War seems to have drained it again. Meanwhile WWII was not well regarded at all but was the highest selling for ages, then sales declined again even though the next games were a more exciting direction for the series.

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LinkMarioSamus posted...

Also don't know if you care, but the lead is voiced by Sam "Avatar" Worthington.

As in James Cameron's Avatar? It's been years since I've seen that film, but I don't remember anything about his performance, which I guess isn't all bad since at least it means he wasn't bad in a distracting way. I think in CoD he feels kind of unremarkable too, but to be fair to him he's playing a character that lacks emotional range.

Keep in mind that only a few levels of Black Ops are actually set in Vietnam. There are some in other places like WWII Russia for instance. I don't know what attracts you about 'Nam as a setting, but definitely don't go in expecting Full Metal Jacket or Apocalypse Now. Call of Duty is much more light-hearted than those, I'd say.

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I finished Black Ops tonight. By pouring over a few more hazy flashbacks about exciting explosive gunfights Mason remembers that he got brainwashed into thinking his Russian imaginary friend was a real guy and killing for him, even against the American army's orders. The numbers he's been hallucinating are code for Soviet sleeper agents who are planning to attack America with a highly deadly chemical weapon. The two guys who have been interrogating him all game long are his friends Hudson and Weaver. Also, Mason killed JFK.

They find out that the broadcast signal is coming from a Russian ship off the coast of Cuba and go blow it up, killing the Russian bad guy in the process.

The levels in Vietnam are actually quite good-looking, so I guess I'd agree with LMS that they're among the game's selling points. The core gameplay of most levels is essentially the same as what I described earlier, though there are a few slightly different ones. There's one where you switch between the perspectives of a guy in a plane playing the world's worst Real-Time Strategy game and the troops he's commanding, and there's one where you're Hudson wearing a hazmat suit while the Nova-6 virus was around. If your suit breaks, you instantly die. It's kind of like the game disables your regenerating health for a little while. There are a couple of helicopter levels, which are pretty easy because most things can't really fire back at you in.

Once you finish the campaign you get dumped into a Zombies round as JFK. I died on the third wave because a zombie snuck up on me. I'm just that good at games.

Final Thoughts on Black Ops, and 2010, coming soon.

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Yep, I found that out later. From what I gather the game's basically a sequel to Call of Duty: World at War, even with Gary Oldman reprising his voice role from that game.

Yes James Cameron's Avatar.

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Ed Harris and Ice Cube are in there as well. Its probably the starriest cast for a CoD campaign, before they just had one big name ad the baddie or putting them to the side in other modes.

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Ed Harris is win.

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Final Analysis: Call of Duty: Black Ops
What I thought of Black Ops: Not an impressive game.
Would I play it again? Nah
Did it deserve to lose round 1? I'd say so.

People don't agree much when it comes to war. There are all kind of opposing perspectives on how much war should be happening, whether war can ever be justified, what the rules of war should be, and which countries specifically should fight one another. The one thing we can just about all agree on, though, is that war isn't much fun. It mostly tends to be either fatal or traumatic. It requires a state of constant hyper-vigilance and the slightest mistake invites death. I'm glad I was born in a time without the draft: if I imagine being a soldier on the field of battle, all I can think of is stress. I'd be terrified that I would step on a landmine, or get shot by a sniper - or that I'd be so jumpy I would accidentally shoot one of my own squadmates.

That's one of the purposes games serve. They can simulate the unpleasant parts of life in a more safe environment. I accidentally shot my own guys all the time in Call of Duty, but I would just kind of laugh about it in that context - they're invincible anyway. Sometimes I'd do it on purpose. Once you take away the possibility of grievous injury, there's a fun, adrenaline-inducing aspect to gunfights and killing - especially when it's combined with heavy amounts of exaggeration.

Or at least that's the theory. In actuality I found Black Ops mediocre as a single-player experience. There's a sense that they're trying, at least, with some parts of the story, like the twist-filled final section and a few character building monologues, but for the most part the writing is an afterthought. It's another one of those games where it's hard to care about any of the plot twists or even the overall stakes of the story because there's next to no character development. I don't think the protagonist ever expresses any emotion besides stone-facedness or mild anger. The twists are also undermined by some extremely unsubtle foreshadowing. There's some dialog that might as well be saying "there's gonna be a twist about Reznov."

But Call of Duty is far from a story-focused game. Really, all the effort went into the multiplayer, but if you do play the campaign the emphasis there is on the gameplay, or maybe just on the spectacle. As for the gameplay, I didn't find it too involving. I don't like having to press the analog sticks for actions like the melee attack and sprint, for one thing, but the real problem is that it just lacks player agency and isn't challenging in the right ways. It's kind of like the video game equivalent of putting together IKEA furniture. The game always supplies you with exact instructions on where to go, what to do, and when. When you place explosives, the game gives you one very precise place where you can stick them and doesn't let you detonate them until it says so. The only time when you do have some control over your approach is during the firefights, but everything dies so quickly and you have such tanky regenerating health that those just aren't that interesting. Enemies are all interchangeable and the only way the game can make a particular encounter harder is to just send in more and more guys, which makes it start to feel like a chore. Even in the combat, there are so many enemies around and so many NPC allies taking them down that the player still doesn't feel very important to the way things progress. I'm pretty sure you can just sit in a corner and let your invincible AI buddies do everything for you if you want. It also has a bit of a problem where the graphics are indistinct and it can be hard to tell enemies from allies. All the non-standard gameplay modes like the aerial control ship and the helicopter levels strike me as kind of half-baked.

I've always had the impression that Call of Duty kind of lacks originality and inspiration, and my experience with Black Ops hasn't changed my mind.

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And that brings us to the end of the games of 2010. Before we move on, I want to say a little about some of the snubs from this year.

Final Fantasy XIII
Release Date: March 9, 2010

There was a two per series limit on bracket inclusion in this contest. Given how obscure some of the games that did make it through are, I'd be willing to speculate that FFXIII was a game that lost its place in the contest to that rule. Even so, a mainline Final Fantasy game failing to make the bracket at all, on this of all sites, is a series indictment of that game. There was a long time when it seemed like you could've thrown Final Fantasy Mystic Quest in one of these contests and it still would've made at least the third round. This is the place where Cloud and Sephiroth could decimate icons like Mario without breaking a sweat. Just to make things worse, FFXIII failed to make the bracket while FFXIV, an MMO, did - on the site where even World of Warcraft can't beat Paper Mario.

It's not surprising, really. FFXIII is largely regarded as an ugly, obnoxious game with linear hallways for levels and an automated combat system. If it had made the bracket, I would only have felt comfortable taking it to win against some of the weakest games in the contest.

But you know what, FFXIII is a game I've always wanted to stick up for. I admit I'd have to be reserved in my praise of the story. It's cute how Lightning becomes the surrogate big brother figure to Hope, and I find Sazh likable for the most part, but I have to admit it's needlessly convoluted and it's easy to see why a lot of people dislike the main cast. I don't mind Hope, but he's definitely an anime stock character.

I do actually think FFXIII has a great combat system, though - at least once you unlock enough options. It definitely spends way too long in tutorial mode, so that most of the early combat really is just mashing auto-attack until you win. Once you unlock the full range of paradigms for each character, though, it becomes a pretty interesting system that's more about rhythm and timing than selecting the exact right moves. And as justified as complaints about the art style may be, the soundtrack is really great.

Professor Layton and the Unwound Future
Release Date: September 12, 2010

I hope we can all agree that Professor Layton is fucking awesome, and I don't expect much argument when I say that Unwound Future is the best game in his series. The puzzles are fun and it makes pretty good use of the touch screen (I would've liked an in-game keyboard instead of the system where you have to write letters with the stylus and hope the game interprets them correctly,) but I would content that Layton is a series that's carried by its story. More precisely, how hilariously wacky all its stories are. What could have been a very simple series about an English gentleman solving mysterious is elevated to new ridiculous heights by constant use of futuristic technology, improbably perfect disguises, and the occasional dose of straight-up bullshit.

This one is set up incredibly well. You have a future version of Layton's protegee, Luke, sending a letter back to the present, Layton and Luke go to the future to meet him and it's slowly proven that they really have time-travelled, and then you find out that the future Professor Layton is a mafia-controlling supervillain and only the present Layton can hope to stop him. What's equally important is the contrast between Layton himself, the skeptical, constantly logical puzzle-lover and his much more credulous apprentice.

The problem with Professor Layton as a character is that he doesn't really have any weaknesses. That's another reason why it's so clever to have his future self act as the villain, but the game also solves this issue somewhat with flashbacks about his less self-assured past self and the tragic romance he experienced as a youth.

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On the whole, I'd say 2010 was a good year for games. As much as it felt like a holdover from the last decade, I think the 2000s were a great decade for video games so revisiting their trends can't hurt. A lot of the year's best games were those, like Galaxy 2 and ME2, that carried on from games of the 2000s.

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Here is my ranking of the games I played from 2010:

13: Red Dead Redemption At first I had this a little higher, but it would be remiss of me not to rank the game that held me up for two months in last place. RDR has good points, but they're buried under a lot of repetition.

12: Call of Duty: Black Ops This was one of the games I wasn't really looking forward to playing. I think I ended up liking it a little better than I expected, but I'd still describe it as a mostly forgettable experience.

11: Heavy Rain I'm only sparing this one from last place because it is at least kind of funny. Definitely a totally inept story and barely qualifies as a video game.

10: Super Meat Boy 2 hard 4 me. This game does have good core mechanics, and I wouldn't blame anyone who rated it way higher, but for the most part it just got on my nerves.

9: Halo: Reach A fairly good shooter - I'd say it's miles ahead of Black Ops in terms of its moment-to-moment gameplay, but it fails to deliver on the potential of the fall of Reach as a story.

8: Pokemon Heartgold I think I had more fun writing about this game than actually playing it. It was a nice, casual and relaxing overall adventure though. I just wish mechanics like confusion and paralysis weren't so RNG-based.

7: VVVVVV Similar to Meat Boy, but I appreciate the Metroidvania-style game world and I found it managed a better balance between challenging and obnoxious. I also liked how happy-go-lucky the characters were.

6: Starcraft II I'd give an overall positive opinion on this one in both gameplay and story. This is one I'd like to revisit, because I am kind of curious to see how the rest of the story works out.

5: Bayonetta The biggest pleasant surprise on the list. I didn't expect to get much out of this game but ultimately found it charming. Another one I'd like to go back to.

4: Mass Effect 2 I considered this one as my Game of the Year, so the whole top 4 is very close. The gameplay honestly isn't up to much, but the characters are just so compelling that I still kind of miss them. Looking forward to playing ME3.

3: Civilization V The game I've played the longest. I still want to learn how to manage on difficulty 8. For me, this is probably the one with the best gameplay out of everything from 2010.

2: Super Mario Galaxy 2 The closest thing to perfection in this year. It's really remarkable how many different mechanics and gameplay styles there are in this game and how well-executed they all are. Awe-inspiring soundtrack, too.

1: Fallout: New Vegas It feels a little odd to pick this over Galaxy considering it's kind of a buggy disaster, and in contrast to how well-done all of Mario's different mechanics are, those of New Vegas are mostly shallow. New Vegas is my 2010 GotY because it's the game I want to go back to the most and it's the game I like to talk about with other people the most. Between build options, story decisions, and its huge number of interesting quests, it's the most fascinating game of 2010.

It's funny that I ended 2010's set of games at the very start of a new year. As a little bonus, here's my ranking of the four 2020-released games I played this year:

4: Animal Crossing: New Horizons I was into this one for a little while, but there came a point when I realized I was playing it every day just to get my fossils, consecutive log-in bonus, and so on. That's to say, I realized it was a chore.

3: Final Fantasy VII Remake I love the original FFVII, but I thought this game was a bit hit and miss. The graphics are beautiful (and all the characters are attractive,) the ochestrated remixes of the original game's music are amazing and the combat system is surprisingly good, but I'm not a fan of a lot of the story changes and the extra content kind of feels like padding.

2: Hades A compelling game that makes good use of both its inspiration from Greek Mythology and its rougelike game-mechanics for the sake of its story. It's just let down for me a little bit by the fact that it's still a rougelike, which is a genre I just don't care for.

Which leaves my game of the year as the only 2020 game I actually finished:

1: The Henry Stickmin Collection I think I'm the only person on this board who played this, and probably one of the few who would like it. Most of the games were originally hosted on sites like Newgrounds (rip Flash) and use a very immature, reference-heavy type of humor. I actually discovered it through the Youtube algorithm. It's another one that barely even qualifies as a video game, but it does do a remarkably good job delivering on a branching story. The final game is completely different based on the choices you made in the previous two, leading to a ton of different endings that all manage to feel like satisfying conclusions that change things for the characters. I thought the whole game was very lovable in a kind of earnest, simple way. I 100% completed this one in like three days, and it only took that long because I was trying to savor it.

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Yeah aside from CoD4 I don't think any of them tried to be anything more than a generic action story, now of course there's an exception.

Zombies. I really wanted to try and get this set up, but alas it's pretty expensive, takes awhile and requires four people. So I'm just gonna take some time to sing its praises.

Whild this side mode had plenty of lore and easter eggs in the past, it didn't have any actual story until Black Ops' first DLC pack. In the map Ascension, by finding and doing obscure tasks hidden around the map you could trigger key dialogue and events that all point towards a bigger plot. Every time a new map came out the fanbase would spend a ton of time looking around the map trying to figure out how to do the various puzzles and how they all connected to each other. It was such a polarizing experience, like you wouldn't expect something on this level out of CoD at all, but here it was, almost like a completely different game! Honestly it kind of reminds me of Gravity Falls with how the fanbase came together to uncover the different secrets. Doing these with my friends back in high school is easily one of my favorite gaming memories.

This was the first one (but in the BO3 remake of the map) if you're interested, they just get more intense from there.

https://youtu.be/RMKLm02BevE


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Let's move on to the new year:

2011: Dawn of a New Day

If 2010 was the hold-over year from the previous decade, then it's simple enough to say 2011 marks the first trepidatious steps into the trends of the new decade. There are a couple arguable examples of displaced 2000s games in this year. Portal 2 and Dark Souls bear a lot of resemblance to their predecessors, for example, Arkham City isn't too far from an open-world Arkham Asylum. If I do put on my pattern-finding goggles and examine this year, I might say that the decade's early gaming trends are as follows:

The Rise of Indie Games - One of the most influential games I'll be playing from 2011 is Minecraft. Its own imitator Terraria is here too, and they're backed up by Bastion, the first game from the now-beloved Supergiant studio whose Hades did so well in GotY contests this year.

Everything Goes Open World: Arkham City made me think of this. It expands Arkham Asylum into a small open-world game, which is something we'll see happen to Assassin's Creed, Metal Gear, and even Zelda before the project is over.

Dark Souls Happens: Apart from Minecraft and perhaps Skyrim, the only other game that is arguably the most influential of 2011 is Dark Souls. Demon's Souls did a lot of the same things, but it seems like they were only really popularized by the second game. "The Dark Souls of ___" becomes a popular and often-mocked catchphrase, difficult games come back in vogue, and asychronous and anonymous multiplayer styles start becoming more popular. Later games like Journey and definitely Death Stranding take a lot of influence from those games.

The first game of 2011 to make the contest, though, was its own thing. You can compare it to some other games, but it didn't really start any trends or follow them. That game is, of course:

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
Release Date: January 11, 2011
Playing on: DS
Previous Experience With Ghost Trick: I've heard it's good
Expectations for Ghost Trick: Looking forward to this one.

Here's a little bit of a board 8 darling. I think this is one of those near visual novel games, where there are puzzles but a large portion of your time with it is dedicated to text punctuated by static character portraits. This games were pretty popular on DS. Professor Layton fits the mold, and so do Ace Attorney, 999, and Hotel Dusk. I'm not about to be contrary toward the rest of the board on this one. I really like those games too, so I expect this will be up my alley.

I don't know much more about it than that. I know there's a dog. I know the main character is a blonde guy in a red suit, and that he kind of looks like a troll doll. I can't say much more about it than that. I think that's a good thing, though. For a story-focused game, it's nice to go in with as little pre-existing knowledge as possible.

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I think the sequels to 2000s games released in 2011 are a lot more different than those released in 2010. Arkham Asylum and Arkham City are much less similar than Galaxy and Galaxy 2 for example.

I also think this is a cracking year filled with great games, and also huge games as well. However, despite that itll be probably not take you as long because this year had the fewest entrants of sny year in GotD. Not because there were fewer good games, but because this was the year of the snubs. Skyward Sword, Uncharted 3, Super Mario 3D Land, LA Noire, Battlefield 3, The Witcher 2, a lot of big snubs. Looking at what you mentioned for 2010 it stands out - if FFXIII had made it thats a damning indictment of these contests. However, I definitely dont think indies are to blame - the indies in the contest were either big names that would make it regardless, or classics. If anything stood out as unusual its more the likes of Destiny and Ys VIII.

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BetrayedTangy posted...

Yeah aside from CoD4 I don't think any of them tried to be anything more than a generic action story, now of course there's an exception.

Zombies. I really wanted to try and get this set up, but alas it's pretty expensive, takes awhile and requires four people. So I'm just gonna take some time to sing its praises.

That's pretty neat. I generally like that kind of "obscure" storytelling in video games, where the player has to investigate the story for themselves. I think that's a good way to use the medium.

Lightning Strikes posted...

I think the sequels to 2000s games released in 2011 are a lot more different than those released in 2010. Arkham Asylum and Arkham City are much less similar than Galaxy and Galaxy 2 for example.

I also think this is a cracking year filled with great games, and also huge games as well.

By my count, 2011's 10 games make it the year with the 8th most games, ahead of 2014's 8 and 2016's 9. I'm definitely not trying to knock any of the games that made it over FFXIII, I would just guess that some of them got fewer nominations but FFXIII was still not included because of the two per series limit. I'm confident the same thing happened to Skyward Sword, but that's still kind of an indictment of that game in a similar way to FFXIV beating out XIII. Imagine if a game of the 90s contest were run with the same rule and Link's Awakening made it in over OoT or LttP. I'm hoping I'll get through 2011 faster than 10, that's for sure. Aside from having a few less games, I'm hoping to avoid any RDR-style deadlocks and I won't be playing quite as many extra games. I actually haven't played that many of the 2011 games in the contest, so I don't know for sure how I'll assess the year on the whole, but I can say that there are at least two games I hold in really high regard.

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Ghost Trick gets off to a tense start. Our strong-jawed troll doll protagonist wakes up dead and then watches a little red-haired girl get capped a few feet away from his corpse. Then the pixar logo talks to him and teaches him about his new ghost powers, which he can use to travel back in time if he finds a corpse, up to four minutes before that person's death, and only if the corpse is less than one day old. He can also move a short range between inanimate objects and possess them to do simple actions. With these limitations, he manages to save the little red haired girl's life - by dropping a giant wrecking ball on the hitman who's trying to kill her.

According to the Pixar icon, the protagonist will fade into non-existence by morning, and there's nothing he can do about that. He still decides to try and found out who he is and how he died (the dead, it seems, have amnesia.)

It's definitely a good opening for the purpose of making you want to keep playing. Besides the fast-paced intro and the intrigue, I also like the whole idea that the main character is facing death and has to accept it. I usually find that theme poignant.

The pixar logo tells the troll doll about one last ghost power: the ability to travel through phone lines. If he possesses a phone while it's in the middle of a call, he can find out how to get to the other end. First he tries this out on the main villains, the same ones who ordered his murder, when they try to get up on the late hitman using the phone in the junkyard he died at, which the little red-haired girl answers. They turn out to be two exceptionally posh men in a fancy futuristic bunker. The mastermind is a short blue man and there's another guy who is kind of like the Max to his Darla Dimple. The troll doll pulls a few ghost tricks and finds out that his own name is Sissel and that Darla still wants to kill the little red-haired girl, whose name is Lynne. He manages to make it to Lynne's apartment when the bad guys call a second hitman who is waiting for her there.

When he arrives, the hitman has already knocked out a young girl there and killed her pet dog. Sissel travels back to four minutes before the dog's death and manages to hide both of them under the couch before the hitman shows up. He can also talk with the dog's ghost. His name is Missile and he has a typical dog-like personality. Once he saves Missile's life, he can still talk with him by "possessing" his body and learns that Missile remembers him. The little girl, named Kamila, gets a call from Lynne asking to meet at a restaurant called the Chicken Kitchen, and leaves the apartment. Missile tries to break down the door to follow her, while Sissel goes to use the phone in the adjacent apartment, which is home to a romance writer and her young daughter. Apparently the writer is fighting with her husband and has took the kid and run. Sissel learns the way to the husband's office, but goes back to the junkyard instead, where he finds the police investigating his murder. Lynne has been arrested as a suspect, although she herself is a detective with the local police department. One of the higher-ranking detectives shows up on a bike to interrogate her. Apparently they're pretty close. The second hitman murders her before they say much to each other, though. Sissel, working with Lynne's ghost, goes back in time and saves her again, even though she won't promise to investigate who Sissel is when she comes back to life. She says she's too busy with her own investigation. She doesn't know who Sissel is, but before he was murdered he tried to meet with her and said he had information that relates to whatever she's investigating.

I'm enjoying the game so far. I'd probably still be playing if I hadn't been worried about having to write a really long write-up. It does remind me a little bit of games like Phoenix Wright and Professor Layton, but I'd say it has more gameplay than those and what gameplay it does have is also more substantial. It's pretty easy so far because the number of objects you can interact with at a given time is always quite limited, which makes it easier to figure out what you're supposed to do, but I like that because puzzle games can become a bit annoying and slow-paced when they're too tough. Another thing it has in common with the aforementioned games is that it's very silly. All the characters have really exaggerated, eccentric appearances and behaviors. I know a lot of people like Missile, and it is interesting how he seems to have the start of his own character arc going on, but my favorite so far is probably Detective Cabanela, who is kind of a parody of Elvis or possibly Michael Jackson for some reason. He's always dancing no matter what else he's doing. He just makes me laugh. I also find it kind of funny that he rides a bike. The game has a good sense of visual style, and I'm interested to see where the story goes from here. I have a feeling I'll be revisiting places like the Chicken Kitchen and the lady writer's apartment, and I'm curious to see how that's implemented and how it plays out.


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Evillordexdeath posted...

I actually haven't played that many of the 2011 games in the contest, so I don't know for sure how I'll assess the year on the whole, but I can say that there are at least two games I hold in really high regard.

Oh yeah a little bit ago, I used HowLongToBeat to get an approximate number of hours for each game

Ghost Trick 12 hours
Dead Space 2 9 hours
Portal 2 9 hours
Terraria 92 hours (50)*
Bastion 6 hours
Deus Ex: Human Revoltuion 22 hours
Dark Souls 46 hours
Batman: Arkham City 13 hours
Skyrim 34 hours
Minecraft 124 hours (30)**

* Terraria's weird. After you beat a specific boss, the entire world changes and it's called 'Hard Mode' which has its own final boss. It personally took me about 50 hours to unlock Hard Mode, but I have a feeling it'll take longer than 92 to clear Hard Mode

** Minecraft is all over the place. It really depends on how much you focus on the end goal. I think 30 hours is decent guess, but it could very easily take much longer.

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You can definitely say the same thing for Skyrim.

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BetrayedTangy posted...

Oh yeah a little bit ago, I used HowLongToBeat to get an approximate number of hours for each game

lol, so the majority of the year will be just Terraria and Minecraft apparently. Actually I was originally planning to just play them for two weeks, but maybe I was underthinking that because you're right that they do both have final bosses. I actually did make it past the Wall of Flesh in Terraria about 5 years ago but I have no idea how long it took. What I do remember is spending a really long time grinding for a bee costume.

ctesjbuvf posted...

You can definitely say the same thing for Skyrim.

For sure. I have a 50 hour file in Skyrim that isn't even close to finishing the main story. That game is all about how you approach it. I think Dark Souls also has a decent amount of variance in terms of how long a playthrough might take. I know it took me over 40 hours the first time but I think I've also beaten it in under 20. You get a lot faster when you aren't dying all the time.

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I played a little more Ghost Trick. After Sissel and Lynne part ways, the ghost tries to make his way back to the junkyard telephone and almost immediately overhears that Lynne has escaped from the superintendent's office where she was being held. He catches up with her in the basement - where she's been killed for a third time. The super is a strange little man with a bird on his head (perhaps he's doing an impression of Sazh) and he rigged a room in his basement to shoot anyone who opened the door. Lynne took that bullet while snooping around, so Sissel has to disable the elaborate trap and save her again. Afterward, she agrees to work with him on the condition that he find the work schedule for a "prisoner D99" at the nearby jail, whose actual name is "Detective Jowd." He's in the slammer for having killed his wife. Along with the rest of his amnesia, Sissel doesn't remember how to read, but luckily Jowd's work schedule is blank. He seems to be a peaceful man, quietly humming to himself while painting, and he tells a guard that he's painting portraits of the people he doesn't want to forget, before stepping away and revealing that the person he's painting is Sissel. Before he reunites with Lynne at the Chicken Kitchen, Sissel intercepts a phone call to this jail from Detective Cabanela, who has a video tape with evidence against Lynne. Sure enough, the footage shows that Lynne is Sissel's murderer. Cabanela starts talking about a place called "Point X" that they have surrounded, and where Lynne has shown up - this is the Chicken Kitchen.

Still enjoying the game. It's quite effective at making me want to play more. I had to rewind time a good few times to figure out how the save Lynne from the deathtrap. I wanted to post now because I'm prepared to make a couple guesses about what's going on in the story:

1. Detective Jowd is on death row, and is to be executed tomorrow morning. This is why his work schedule is blank. He was also being treated to a big meal in his cell (from the Chicken Kitchen, I think) which might be his last meal. The case that Lynne is investigating is the murder he's committed. She says that she's running out of time because she's trying to prove he's innocent before he gets killed. The police are talking about how tonight is an important night and that's because Jowd is about to be executed.

2. Sissel wanted to die. The biggest hint about this is just his body language during the footage of his death. He leans back and doesn't react even as Lynne misses her first shot. The "bad guys" also talked about making a deal with Sissel and acted as if this hadn't been invalidated yet. I think he somehow knew that he could become a ghost with supernatural powers and was trying consciously to use them for some purpose. He might have told Lynne that he could save the detective if she killed him.

If I am right, and Sissel really did kill himself on purpose, I don't know exactly what he was trying to accomplish, unless it was just to save the detective. I'm curious to see how everything comes together.

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@Evillordexdeath congrats on finishing 2010! Finishing one year is a great milestone. I have enjoyed following this project thus far. Were all rooting for you. And remember

If you even make it to 20 games this was a resounding success

i give this a 0% chance this will finish

but tag

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Thanks man.

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