Gaming Plans for 2013: Most anticipated games and expanding the backlog.

With 2013 literally tomorrow I figured I’d make a quick post about what I’m looking forward to playing in 2013, and what other gaming exploits I plan on getting into. I’ve got two fairly big projects I’m going to try to do in 2013 as far as gaming goes, and I’m in a pretty good position now to see them both to light. Aside from gaming I’ve got a few other projects I’m going to try to push forward as well, most of those things aren’t even in a planning phase though.

I’ll go ahead and start with my most anticipated (announced) games of 2013. List is in order of release dates.

• Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch (1/22) – A JRPG from Level- 5 with art from Studio Ghibli? Sign me up!
• Dead Space 3 (2/5) – Next installment of one of my favorite current gen series. I need more sci-fi horror in my life.
• Aliens: Colonial Marines (2/12) – I’m a little dubious on this one. Gearbox development team is a good plus (though they’ve had their failures). Direct sequel of Aliens movies. Only thing that worries me is that I’ve been burned by Aliens video games in the past. Maybe this one will pan out though.
• Tomb Raider (3/5) – I was never very big on the Tomb Raider series of old, but this approach to Lara Croft has me fairly interested. An Uncharted feel to the game, with Ubisoft at the helm? I can get behind that. Maybe this will get me into the series.
• South Park: The Stick of Truth (3/5) – I’ve been off and on with this game for a while, but after the VGAs I decided to go ahead and give it a chance. It does look hysterical and I’m a sucker for RPGs.
• Gears of War: Judgement (3/19) – I love Gears, but I’m a bit dubious on this title too. Giving People Can Fly a hand-me-down Gears side story prequel when they could be working on Bulletstorm 2 or something a bit more interesting just leaves a bad feeling in my gut. I’m getting this because I love Gears of War, but I’m not expecting much out of it.
• Bioshock Infinite (3/26) – Bioshock. Do I even need to type anything else here?
• Injustice: Gods Among Us (4/1) – Mortal Kombat fighting mechanics and getting to beat the hell out of people as comic book characters? I can dig it.
• The Last of Us (6/2) – Original IP from Naughty Dog that has a lot going for it. It looks great and I really hope they pull it off. I’d hate for the game to be a dud, and for Naughty Dog to be a 1 trick pony.
• Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 (TBA 2013) – I really like the Castlevania mythos, and I enjoyed Lords of Shadow 1. Pretty excited for this one after watching some trailers.

Other games I’m totally interested in, but aren’t definite day 1 buys for me:

• Devil May Cry (1/15) – I had some fun with DMC 1 and 2 back in the PS2 era, but dropped it for no real reason. I debated picking up the HD collection and DMC 4 but haven’t done that yet. I’ll probably grab this one after I do that and replay the older ones.
• Crysis 3 (2/19) – I like shooters. I liked the other Crysis games. I’ll probably play this eventually.
• FUSE (3/13) – Somewhat interested. Third-person cover shooter with sci-fi/Deus Ex sounding themes seems pretty legit to me.
• Metro: Last Light (3/31) – I couldn’t really get into Metro 2033, but I’ve been debating giving it another chance just because of how good this game looks. I’m still on the fence on this though.
• Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 (4/1) – This is kind of a guilty pleasure of mine, but I really like games that let me play through anime stories. Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 lets you play through the first few arcs of the Naruto Shippuden anime, and this one is supposed to continue where that game left off. It isn’t a day 1 buy for me, but I’ll probably pick it up during the summer lull.
• Splinter Cell: Blacklist (4/1) – I’m not really huge on forced stealth stuff, so I’m a bit dubious on this one because of that. The trailers do make the game look really good though.
• Grand Theft Auto V (TBA Spring 2013) – I’m interested in this for the open world aspects, the economic system that usually comes with these games, and the random fun. I wasn’t a huge fan of GTA4 though, so I’m a little dubious.
• XCOM (TBA) – I like Sci-fi a lot. I really liked XCOM Enemy Unknown. This is a shooter, and I like those too. I’m really interested but fairly dubious because this game has had some really odd news behind it. Changes in design and gameplay style that just smell funny to me. I’ll definitely keep my eye on it though.
• Beyond: Two Souls (TBA) – I’m fairly interested in this one, but I’m going to wait for reviews. I’m also not going to buy it day 1 on the principle that I’m not a big fan of some of the things David Cage has spewed after the success of Heavy Rain.

Next I want to talk about the two video game related projects I’m going to endeavor myself on this year. The first of which is replacing my stolen games and expanding my collection of video games. This mostly covers things I’ve played and want for collection or that I’ve never played and really want to play from the past 2 or 3 console generations (with a little older than that games mixed in but not many). I’ve got two different wish lists for this: An Amazon wish list and a collection list on Google Drive that also has a wish list tab. My current focus on that project is to knock out all the games under $30 while looking for good deals on the more pricey parts of that list.

The second project I’m going to undertake is to upgrade my current gaming setup and eventually have a way to stream myself playing games on a mostly nightly basis. This will be the easier of the two projects and I’ve pretty much already got this mapped out. Only thing I’m really worried about is bandwidth and the fact that I won’t be able to stream anything for a system that doesn’t use HDMI cords without actually getting a TV (the setup I plan to use and currently use is all computer monitors).

That is what I’ll be up to in 2013 though, as far as gaming in concerned. I’ll update my “projects” page as well to reflect all this too. I’m already having a pretty awesome January. Moved in to new place and start new job on Monday. This year is already great.

Game(s) of the Year 2012

Welp, it is the time of year again where everyone is throwing out their game of the year picks and all that jazz. I’ve not really been updating this blog too well, but I figured I’ll type out a little bit about what my top games of the year are. The reason I’m just doing “top games” instead of “Game of the Year” is because this year it is really difficult for me to pick what game I think is the overall best. So many new IPs, incredible upgrades on existing franchises, and unique gameplay experiences happened this year. What I’m going to do is a “top 5″ and then follow that with some honorable mentions (Note: None of this is in any particular order). Every single game I’m going to make note of in this post is worth every dime you could possible spend on it. With that being said, let us dive right into it.

XCOM Enemy Unknown

XCOM Enemy Unknown is a perfect change of pace from your standard mindless AAA shooters and action games that tend to come out every year. It forces players to intelligently think about how they go about every detail in the game. I’m not talking about just combat here, I mean everything. Macromanaging your base is just as important in XCOM as the micromanagment of your troops in battle scenarios. Thinking about where to allocate your resources in the early part of the game is the difference between being prepared for everything to come at you, or scrambling to keep yourself in the game with a steady flow of resources. The grid based strategy action is also extremely well done and works perfectly on any platform that the game is played on (I actually played the game on the Xbox 360 mostly, and never had any issues). Aside from the superb mechanics, XCOM also has a good story to progress through that has you doing a lot of unique things during combat missions. All in the name of science and survival! If you’re looking for a unique turn based strategy game with tons of depth, look no further than XCOM Enemy Unknown. Easily one of the best games to release in 2012.

Note: XCOM Enemy Unknown also features a rather unique “Warhammer” tabletop style multiplayer mode. I just can’t really comment on it because I’ve not played any of the multiplayer yet =X.

The Walking Dead

Two words best describe Telltale Games’ episodic The Walking Dead: “Them Feels.” As I understand it, The Walking Dead the game is a prequel to AMC’s The Walking Dead TV show, which is an adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead comic book. Now, with all of that out of the way, The Walking Dead the game is one of the best story driven games you could possibly play. Just about every choice in the game is specifically designed to tap into some sort of emotion. Choices like picking a specific person to save, or taking supplies at someone else’s misfortune are all designed evoke an emotional feeling players. Whether it be guilty, angry, frustration, shock, or anything else I guarantee that you’ll come out of each episode of the 5 episode series knowing what I mean when I say “Them Feels.” I really wish I could say more, or give examples, but literally every decision and every little detail about this game can be a spoiler. Suffice it to say that this is one of the best story driven games I’ve ever played. Telltale learned from previous titles like Jurassic Park: The Game and other hits in the genre like Heavy Rain and vastly improved the formula. At only around $25, this is a steal for one of the best games in 2012. EVERYONE should play this.

FarCry 3

FarCry 3 was a massive pleasant surprise for me. I was on the fence about getting it and playing it because of how little I’ve heard about it from Ubisoft. However, when I got my hands on a copy and started playing it, I was hooked. There are a bunch of things that set this game apart from your standard military guy blasting stuff away. First and foremost is that the main character, Jason Brody isn’t really the “shooter bro” type. Jason is actually more of the really annoying preppy frat kid type. So naturally Jason starts off a little whiny and having to progress into toughing up a bit. It is a little weird how he basically goes from whiny rich kid to stealthy pirate killer in the course of a couple of days, but that is a little nit-picky. The open world aspects of the game are awesome too. The organic feel of the FarCry 3 rival that of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. There were many times where I would be setting up to liberate a stronghold (Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood style) and a creature of some sort would meander in and spice things up a bit. The majority of the predatory creatures (Tigers/Bears/Komodo Dragons/Dingos/etc) will just attack anything that moves. I’ve also been in fights with some of those same creatures while hunting that would end up on the road. Then, out of nowhere, some bad guys would speed down the road and accidentally run over the creature I was fighting while they began to try to shoot me down. Stuff like that just happened, unscripted. It really made the island feel a bit more chaotic and alive. Probably the biggest thing that sets FarCry 3 out from the rest of the shooters out there is its story and how it plays with the theme of insanity and changes in mental state. You see it very obviously in the antagonist Vaas. However, you also see Jason’s personality slowly change. Jason will also start to question himself, and it leads to some interesting plot points. Aside from that, the FarCry 3 has stellar gameplay, amazing visuals, and loads to do. The cooperative missions weren’t anything fantastic but it was a nice touch, and I’ve not touched any of the PVP multiplayer so I can’t really comment on that. However, if you want an amazing single player shooter experience, you should definitely check out FarCry 3. It is definitely the best shooter to come out this year.

Dishonored

Next on the list we’ve got Dishonored, an action-stealth-first-person-adventure-thing. So yea, Dishonored doesn’t really fall under any specific genre of game. It has a lot of different genres blended into it to make a really awesome experience with a lot of replayability. You’ll see a lot of inspiration from other games in Dishonored. It has some Bioshock, some Half-Life 2, some Assassin’s Creed, and a little bit of Fable thrown in. None of that is a bad thing. Everything about Dishonored is designed in such a way that there are multiple ways to accomplish any task. Whether brute force, stealth, pacifism, or violence is your thing, Dishonored gives you a way to complete a task. The introduction of the “Chaos” mechanic even has the city of Dunwall changing to how tasks are completely. If you’re ultra violent, Dunwall will start to have more enemies and unpleasant things about due to the high amounts of chaos you’ll be generating from leaving all the bodies around. Alternatively, you can go through the entire game without killing a single person. The amount of Chaos one stir’s up also affects the game’s ending (there are 3 separate endings I believe). Dishonored’s story is also very good. Centered around Corvo Attano’s needing to prove he didn’t murder the empress, his revenge of the people who did murder the empress, and his role in protecting the empress’ daughter Emily. The story as a whole was very good, and you add all the stuff I already mentioned to that and you’ve got an awesome game.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

And finally, our last game in the top 5. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is an amazing Action/RPG title. Imagine the open world aspects of Skyrim with the combat mechanics of God of War inside of a fantastic fantasy world with thousands of years of story written by R.A. Salvatore. There are a lot of epic quests lines, one shot quests, and the overall story is amazing. There are tons of things to do in the world and tons of depth. Not just depth in the world though, the RPG and crafting systems also offer tons of depth. You can mix and match class from a standard “pure” warrior/rogue/mage type to hybrid rogue/mage rogue/warrior warrior/mage too. And these hybrid “classes” even give extra benefits. It is all an awesome system on top of a deep world setting with great game play and fantastic lore. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning hasn’t gotten the recognition it deserve this year. Any RPG or Action game fans will love this game. I wrote a full review for Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning over at InteractiveDistractions.com.

That is my top 5 list for this year. If you’ll notice, all of those except FarCry 3 are brand new video game IPs. Which is awesome for the industry this late in the current console life cycle. It goes to show that new IPs can still do really good. Hopefully production companies will be a little less scared of releasing some new IPs next year and we can see some more awesome games come our way.

These 5 games aren’t the only good games this year though. Here are all the honorable mentions I can think of. Every one of these is worth your money (again in no particular order):

• Assassin’s Creed 3
• Borderlands 2
• Mass Effect 3
• Darksiders 2
• Halo 4
• Tales of Graces F
• Journey
• Mark of the Ninja
• Sleeping Dogs
• Dragon’s Dogma
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 2
• Legend of Grimrock
• Spec Ops: The Line

I’d also like to make a note for Doom 3 BFG Edition and Zone of the Enders HD Collection. They’re not new games, but did come out this year. They’re both totally worth playing through.

Couple things to note: 1) I didn’t get a chance to play a lot of Indie games this year, so a lot of the new indie games aren’t on my list because I don’t really have an opinion of them (I think FTL and Lone Survivor are the ones I haven’t had a chance to play that got good marks). 2) I don’t own a Wii or a 3DS. I’m kind of starting to get interested in playing some of the Nintendo games again, but I don’t really care too much about them.

Thoughts? Opinions? Shout at me! Leave a comment here or yell at me on Twitter!

Creative Motivation

So I’m this weird type of beast that when I get super discouraged/stressed about things I’m less likely to be motivated to do stuff. Weird I know. I’ve been in that sort of slump lately and I’m kind of hoping that PAX Prime this year will reinvigorate my motivation. Looking go so far with that. I’m already thinking of ways to get myself in creative mode post-PAX.

My general idea looks something like this: September – Every week create 1 game using Flash. Something different each time and fairly basic. Just implement a single mechanic or two into a full fledged game. Think Bejeweled or Mario. October – Work on a more complex game. Probably in Flash also (maybe Python). See how far I can get in a month. November – Learn how to use RPG Maker  and goof around with that a bit. Maybe toss together another basic flash game or two while learning it (to keep me creating and thinking of mechanics while learning the new program). I’ve got some ideas for a bigger game come December but we’ll have to see what I put together.

That being said, I’ve worked a little bit on the card game project and I’m starting to think it is a bit more than I can chew when I look at the design sheet I have for it. I’d rather start up with something simple and move towards something more complex, and my vision for the card game will require some features a tad too complex for me right now. It kind of hurts my motivation to be smashing away at the thing without seeing much progress. So starting smaller and seeing progress quicker will help me keep my motivation. That project is basically postponed for a while. Probably next year. I totally still plan on doing it still though, I think it’d be cool.

That is pretty much where I’ve been the last month or so. Sounds sort of lame, but I’m hoping I’ll jump back up soonishly. I’ll post progress on flash games and etc here when I start that up next month. I should be pumping out 2 new reviews here soon for Indis as well. One for Diablo 3 and one for Darksiders 2.

Reboot Finished!

Alrighty, so this is just going to be a brief post about all the changes I’ve made to this site and what I intend to do with it now.

The biggest change will probably be the fact that I’m going to focus on what I’m doing project wise and a lot of my posts will probably be somewhat related to that. In addition to just stating that, I’ve added a “My Projects” page that’ll list off all the projects I’m currently working on, descriptions of projects, what the progress is on them, and links to view or download them if applicable. Additionally I removed some cluttered stuff on the side menu as well, and added my Twitter feed. I’m no longer going to be posting about what I’m playing and such unless I have something substantial to say about it. This is mostly because I posted a link to my Raptr profile on the right menu as well. My Published Works and My Projects sections are currently 100% updated and I’ll try to update them weekly (even if I don’t make a post). I’m not going to commit to a certain time period to make posts, I’ll just make them as I see fit. That being said I do plan to more regularly make posts, and give this blog a bit more attention. I’ll try to be less ranty that my prior posts and only post informative things. I’m sure I’ll occasionally rant on certain topics, but I won’t make it a regular thing. Most posts will be devoted to a single topic, instead of posts prior that were just about how my week went or something along those lines. This way I can get more detailed, and more importantly it looks more professional. A more professional look is kind of my whole goal here. I’m not going all the way out on that (mostly because I don’t think that’d be possible), but I’m going to make an effort to make my posts as professional as possible (this excludes rants for obvious reasons).

So content you’ll see on here now will now be based on a single topic. Topics will have the wide range that they had before, but be more focused. This could mean I make multiple posts in one day, and could mean that I go a while without posting anything if I don’t have anything substantial to post. Hopefully I’m productive enough where I don’t take forever to post updates and the like.

I think that about covers it. Feel free to give me any feedback about the new and improved blogthing.

REBOOOOOOOOOOT

Rebooting my blog. Should be done in the next week or so. Hopefully I’ll start writing more and giving updates on my writing and projects more.