Goat Sim
Apr. 1st
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The shitty simulator trope is way to overdone these days, culminating in the likes of a goddamn grass simulation and a dishearteningly terrible shopping sim. But among all of that trash lies Goat Sim, a joke game with a simple premise and great presentation.
The setup is that you are a goat, and your videogame is terrible. The store page for Goat Sim promises bugs, and sure enough they're here in spades. You are free to run around at will and slam/smash/lick whatever you want, often resulting in violent bouts of destruction.
Ostensibly Goat Sim is actually closer to the Tony Hawk games, as you try to combo actions together for bigger score multipliers. It's an incredibly stupid game, but it's a game that knows it's stupid and invites you to be stupid alongside it. In a year where so many AAA games are shipping in buggy, unreleased states, at least this one has the balls to tell you about it.
Dark Souls 2
Apr. 25th (PC version)
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Despite being a massive fan of the first game, and putting a number of hours into the second game, I've resisted doing a full look at DS2. It's a fantastic game, that's for sure, and fans of the first one will fall in love with this re-worked sequel. The only reason I have't officially looked at it is because I can't yet. DS2 is a game that deserves to be examined as a whole, and having not completed the game I feel I'd do it a disservice.
Here's the condensed version: it's really good. There's more to do, a greater variety of areas, and a better range of upgrade options. Unfortunately, there are some tweaks for the worse, and these are what keep it from being as good as it's predecessor. Notably is the nerfing of the dodge ability, with many bosses and enemies automatically adjusting to you position, and fewer invincibility frames of the animation. This may sound like minor nitpicking, and to a certain degree it is, but this was a integral part of the first game, and the fact that it doesn't work as well here is disappointing.
Regardless, DS2 is an amazingly deep game, with tonnes of challenges to tackle, and a great deal of bosses to conquer. It's one of the best games of the year and one of the best RPGs of the 2010's.
Wolfenstien: The New Order
May 20th
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Resurrecting old franchises is often a risky venture, a fate that Wolfenstien knows all to well. Predictably, people were apprehensive about this reboot that saw the US loosing WW2 and a Nazi-run 1960 world. But it seems that, like it's storyline, this game was able to rewrite history.
This isn't quite a perfect reboot of the classic Wolfenstien, but it's not really trying to be. For the most part New Order actually plays like a stealth game, allowing you to sneak around the level and plan your approach. There's shooting, no doubt, but it's a smarter, more refined shooter then it's barbaric predecessors.
The plot, like I mentioned, concerns the Allies loosing WW2 to a superpowered and technologically advanced Nazi regime. You enter as BJ Blazkowicz, the series' long time protagonist. During a particularly disastrous battle BJ is wounded and left in a vegetate state until the mind 60's where he suddenly recovers and starts immediately getting his kill on, hard style.
It's a nutty, irreverent, and oddly coherent story taking obvious ques from Tarantino and old pulp comics like The Loosers (the original run) or the oldest version of the Suicide Squad. It never takes itself to seriously, but never devolves into the realm of parody, and it's an odd balance that kind of works. Whatever it is, it's one of the best shooters this year, and a great return of single-player FPS games.
Shovel Knight
Jun. 26th
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To many indie games use "retro" as a crutch. The retro look lets them create easier to manage pixel art, while also allows them to prey on people's nolstalgia for the 8/16bit era when "video games were good" (quote: idiots). Where Shovel Knight sets itself apart is it's commitment to the bit. With the exception of a few pallet colors, everything in Shovel Knight is exactly how it would be on an actual NES cart. Add to that great platforming reminiscent of Duck Tales or Castlevania, and a great chiptune soundtrack, including tracks from the actual composer for Mega Man, and this is a game that's pure old school.
Keeping that spirit, the setup is simple. You are Shovel Knight, a legendary explorer and fighter, armed with your eponymous tool. Your best friend Shield Knight has been kidnapped, and so you must defeat the evil Knights that block you path. Each Knight has a theme represented through their levels, and each present a unique and challenging boss fight.
Like Super Meat Boy before it, this is pure platforming at it's best. The controls are tight and perfect, meaning that screw ups are your fault. There's an upgrade system, and even a risk-reward mechanic that allows you to forgo checkpoints for extra loot. It's a challenging and engaging platformed perfect for lazy Sundays with a 3DS.
Divinity: Original Sin
June 30th
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If it hasn't become glaringly obvious, I love huge RPG games. I'm not the kind of person to assign a dollar/hour equation to a game, and some of my favorite games are incredibly short, but I do get giddy when a game is packed with plenty of content. Divinity: Original Sin particularly tickled my fancy by being an absolutely stunning and massive game, with tonnes to do and some of the best interaction in recent history.
To a certain degree, Divinity is the anti-Shovel Knight, using old-school mechanics in a new-school game. It's played from an isometric perspective, and sees you mouse-clicking your party around the world to talk/fight whatever you want. Where Divinity really sets itself apart is it's use of pen&paper style interaction. Everything in the game world can be interacted with, and sometimes this can be used to move forward in unexpected ways.
The best example of this is an early quest where you're tasked with stealing something from the captain of the guard in town. Since none of my characters had a good stealth level, I wasn't able to sneak in and rob the man. Eventually I figured out that I could just distract him by talking with him with one character, while my other character stole his stuff.
In anther case I needed to break into a house to find evidence for a crime. I didn't have any lockpicks, and wasn't able to pick-pocket the key from the home owner, so I burnt down her door with a fireball. There's dozens of these kinds of interactions, and the whole game plays like a challenge of "how can I break this?"
If there is one fatal flaw in Divinity, it's the UI. It's horrible and clunky, mostly due to the adherence to the old-school feel. There's no party pool of gold, so that needs to be constantly moved around, and trading with NPC's is a patience testing ordeal in clunkiness that's made me actually stop playing out of frustration. If you can look past this, it's a great game that hearkens back to classics like Baldur's Gate and Darklands.
Check back tomorrow for Quarter 3
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