Top Ten Games of 2015

The year has once again come to an end, which means I need to tell you what my top ten games of the year were. As always I will start at ten and work my way down to one. This year was savage, because there were a ton of great games that came out. I had a super hard time deciding what to put on my list and where to put it.

Keep in mind that these are my personal opinions.

10. Disgaea 5

I love the Disgaea series for its weird characters and insane grinding. However, Disgaea 5 just didn't do it for me like I thought it would. I still had a ton of fun, but the story dragged on for so long that I had lost interest by the time I got to the post game. The overall story was bland and predictable, but the characters held it up.

I may return to it again soon for some more leveling goodness.




9. Yakuza 5

After playing Yakuza 3 I fell in love with the franchise. The combat is a modern take on old school beat em' ups, and feels silky smooth. It's a ton of fun to run around Japan and beat the living hell out
of any thug that tries to take you on. The story in this one was hit or miss for me. Some parts were amazing, while other parts felt like needless filler. The good parts of the story definitely outweighed the bad though. The ending alone was worth playing through the entire game.



8. Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate

Monster Hunter isn't the most accessible game, but 4 brings it much closer to where it should be. The fact that the game teaches you the basics now is a huge improvement. On top of that there are now more weapons and monster variations than ever before. Being able to jump and mount monsters also adds a whole new layer to an already mechanic heavy game. It's a dense franchise, but it rewards those who are willing to put in the time and learn.




7. Shovel Knight

Recently many games have been trying to capitalize on nostalgia by having a "retro" feel. Shovel Knight is one of the few games in this vein that feels genuine. It captures the retro feel while still managing to feel and play like a modern video game. It's challenging, but not so challenging that I felt like I needed to snap my controller in half!






6. Inazuma Eleven GO Chrono Stones

Anime soccer is my jam. I stream Chrono Stone every Wednesday and I still enjoy it. It's the Inazuma Eleven I love but with a lot more characters, moves, and general content. The story was insane in the best possible way, and some cool new characters were introduced. It doesn't do much to change the formula, but it adds enough content to justify its existence.




5. Splatoon

I love when Nintendo is willing to take risks. Somehow Splatoon manages to make me have fun in an online multiplayer focused game. Shooting and swimming around in ink is just plain fun. It helps that you don't have to chase down and shoot your opponents too. Even someone like me can aim at the floor and cover it with ink to contribute to the team. On top of the gameplay Splatoon is oozing with style. The clothing and music are incredible.




4. Rock Band 4

Rock Band 4 didn't really change much from its predecessor. In fact, it actually lost a lot of popular features. This is understandable considering that Harmonix doesn't have a major publisher behind them anymore. The fact that they were able to re-license almost all of the previous DLC for the franchise is bananas.

The reason this is on my list is because I have fun when I play Rock Band. I get together with my friends every Friday and rock out.



3. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

The Phantom Pain isn't much of a Metal Gear Solid game. Sure you play as Big Boss, but the insane story feel and long cinematics are all but gone. In their place is a game that plays very well. In a shocking turn of events the Phantom Pain plays like a modern video game and allows for a lot of possibilities. Anything you can think of trying you'll probably be able to do.

There is so much attention to detail in this game it's shocking. It's not hard to see why the game cost Konami so much money. They didn't think it was worth it, but I certainly did. Somehow Kojima was able to take the craziness missing from the story and implant it into the gameplay. This is a perfect way to end an amazing franchise!


2. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

The world that CD Projekt Red manages to create in the Witcher 3 is vibrant and well realized. I've been getting sick of open world games for years now, but somehow the Witcher managed to make me forget all about that. It helps that when you come across a quest it matters. Even if you don't get a good reward the story itself is generally worth the trouble. That might be my favorite part of the game. There are things and people in every part of the world. It doesn't feel like the desolate wasteland that most open world games have become. Very few things you find will be happy though, because the world of the Witcher is beyond grim.

Combat is challenging when playing on the higher difficulties. You can't just go in and swing your sword around like a fool. You need to prepare potions and douse your sword in oils in order to take down monsters. Everything meshes together to make a cohesive package.


1. Undertale

When I finished Undertale I didn't know what to think. It took me a couple of days to realize that I loved almost everything about the game. Never before have I become so attached to characters in a
video game in such a short time. Undertale can be 100% completed in around six hours. Somehow that is enough time to feel like you're friends with fictional characters, There was a moment in Undertale that made me tear up, and there were multiple moments where I laughed out loud. It's rare for a video game to make me feel such real emotions and that's why Undertale is so special to me.

The game does a great job at subverting what you know about the RPG genre. Sure you can go berserk on an enemy and kill it, but you could also talk to it until it doesn't want to fight anymore. You don't have to kill anything and that's cool!

Above all else though, I will remember Undertale and that's the highest praise I can possibly give a game.

Game Time - March 2015

There have been many months recently where it's easy for me to choose three games to talk about. Mostly because I only played a few games. However, this month I played so much that I couldn't even to begin to get it all down in a post of reasonable length.

As most people probably already know I definitely purchased and played Inazuma Eleven GO 2 Chrono Stones. It's the newest European release in the Inazuma Eleven franchise and I streamed the whole game, well at least the story. If you want to watch that you can check out the archives on my YouTube channel. I am continuing to stream my post-game adventures on Twitch if you interested in that as well. There's been enough of that though, so I'll wait a bit before I talk about it on here.

I also got Bloodborne, which is incredible. It's exactly the kind of Souls game I was hoping it would be. The release of Chrono Stones really sidetracked me, so I haven't played as much Bloodborne as I would have liked to. Still, I played for around 15 hours and have loved it. Sure, I get incredibly frustrated dying to bosses over and over, but my deaths are well deserved. When I finish the game I'll definitely write up a Game Time ID and record a podcast with my thoughts, so look forward to that later this month!

With those two huge releases out of the way I still have a few games left to talk about. The first is Life is Strange, which is an episodic adventure game about rewinding time and high school life. So far I've only played the first episode, but it seems pretty great so far.

I've wanted to play Final Fantasy Type-0 for some time, but sadly it seemed like it would never be localized. Lucky for me it finally happened and I got it! To be honest I really only picked it up for the free copy of the Final Fantasy XV demo it was packaged with, but Type-0 is actually a really cool game. There's a lot going on and I haven't played a bunch of it, but what I have played I liked a lot.

Without further ado, it's game time!

Life is Strange

I tend to build up a lot of rewards points on my PlayStation credit card. I almost always spend the points on PSN cards. In this case I used the PSN card to buy the season pass for Life is Strange. It's an episodic adventure game about a girl named Max who discovers that she has the power to rewind time. She's attending a private highschool in her home town that she has recently moved back to. She doesn't really know anyone or have any friends. She is way into taking pictures, so you can snap photos of things around the world, which net you extra bits of dialogue and trophies.

This first episode is essentially to have Max learn about her special time-rewind power and introduce most of the characters, Each one of them seems pretty interesting and since it's an adventure game you'll want to talk to them as much as possible. The world seems really interesting, and I like a majority of the characters that have been introduced so far. I've seen a lot of talk on the Internet about how the dialogue is terrible, but I thought it was alright. I don't really know, but I'd assume it's hard to write natural dialogue for a high-school girl, or even guy for that matter. It's an awkward time in life.

Throw in the added bonus that Max has magic time travel powers and it gets even weirder. The time
rewinding mechanic is mostly used to solve puzzles. Any items you pick up will be retained when you rewind time, so it makes it easy to experiment with things. Where the mechanic kind of breaks down for me is that it makes choice somewhat meaningless. When given a major option you can rewind immediately afterwards, but once you leave the area you're stuck with the choice. Yes you have to live with the choice, but you can flip-flop beforehand making it less interesting.

I guess I don't have a lot to say about it other than I really liked the first episode. I played through it on stream, so if you want to check it out you can do that here. The second episode is out now, I just need to find the time to play through it.

Final Fantasy Type - 0 HD

It's no surprise that when you try to upscale a PSP game to an HD resolution it doesn't look so good. The textures in this game look absolutely awful, while the character models actually look quite nice. That's what I would have expected. I would not have expected that whenever you move the camera the motion blur is so severe it actually hurts my eyes! I'm not even kidding. Check out some videos of the game. I made one, which you can find here. I never get eye-strain or motion sickness when playing a game, but I sometimes have to look away from the screen or close my eyes while I'm playing.

That issue is a shame, because I think Type-0 is really cool! It's an action game where you play as a group of super powerful military students. There are 14 characters to choose from and each one has a unique weapon and fighting style. The game recommends you use everyone and keep them at a similar level so that's what I've been trying to do. The combat is simple, but fun. You essentially mash square Dynasty Warriors style and occasionally use triangle for magic abilities you can equip. It's not complex, but the act of figuring out how to do various combos is kind of fun. You can also absorb the souls of your fallen enemies, which can be used to upgrade things later.

The models look great, but the textures look like garbage!

Other than traditional missions to kill tons of dudes there are RTS style missions on the world map. You need to control and create various forces and direct them to attack enemy cities. You can run around the map as well and attack soldiers and infiltrate cities. So far this was probably my least favorite part of the game, because the controls are a bit clunky and nothing feels quite right.

What I do absolutely love is that you get to attend the military school when you're not on missions. There's a timer until the next mission and each interaction will make the counter tick down a bit. You can chat with students, tackle sidequests, or go to class and learn a bit. These character interactions are generally pretty interesting. The character interactions are my favorite part so far, because I really don't understand the story at all! Right off the bat they throw out about a million names of places and things and expect you to know what they are, when in reality it's all a bunch of gibberish. I'm going to keep trying to play the game, but the camera can be so off-putting that my play sessions tend to be rather short lived.

Final Fantasy XV: Episode Duscae

I've always said I wouldn't believe in the existence of Final Fantasy XV until I had a playable version of it in my hands. Now that it has happened I'm not nearly as excited as I was for a number of reasons. I'm still very excited for it, but most of my excitement has been replaced with apprehension.

See, this game has been in development for nine years. Games are known to get caught in development hell, but this specific instance is crazy. It started as Final Fantasy Versus XIII, and years later is was re-branded to become XV. The whole time Square-Enix insisted it was still being developed even though the game had dissipated from all trade-shows and media coverage. What I'm worried about is that it's not going to be the same game it was originally intended to be. Hell, the demo is even vastly different than the trailer that was shown a few years ago at E3 when the title was changed to Final Fantasy XV.

That trailer made the game look incredible to me. The main character Noctis is flying through the castle throwing out tons of weapons and teleporting around in order to defeat enemies. There are tons of explosions and huge monsters. It looked like the Final Fantasy equivalent of an action movie. Prior to that when it was Vs. XIII they claimed that the game would be very bloody, dark, and gritty. All the trailers for Vs. XIII were super dark in terms of their color palette while everything for XV is insanely bright. Now, if you look at the demo and the things the game's director has been saying about the game I'm not so sure it's like a cool action game or dark and gritty. Well, it's certainly not gritty.

The demo starts with Noctis and his band of friends waking up in a tent in the middle of  a wide open plain-like area. A phone is vibrating and each character wakes up in a manner that lets you know what their character is like. Turns out the royal car has broken down and they're on a quest to hunt down a behemoth so they can get its horn and sell it for a ton of cash. So that's the entire goal of the demo. Other than the initial scene and a few where they're following the behemoth, and the closing cutscene there's little to no story involved with the demo. Sure, the characters will speak to you as you wander around, but that's really it. It's a shame, because all of the characters seem very interesting and all the information being released about the game make it seem like it's all about the group bonding as they travel across the land.

Hopefully these characters get the development they deserve.

A majority of the demo is dealing with combat. I like it, but I think that if it doesn't increase in depth it will get boring incredibly fast. For some reason Noctis has the ability to use thirteen different weapons, he can only use a few in this demo though. If you hold square, then he will kind of auto attack and do a basic combo. You can alternatively jam square if you prefer. In order to doge you have to hold L1 and you'll automatically dodge hits at the cost of some of your mana. Mana is also used to cast abilities, which are chosen from a menu similar to Kingdom Hearts battle system. Oh yeah, you can also parry blows by pushing L1 right before you get hit. What's weird is that it's kind of hard to die. If you lose all of your HP Noctis just kind of limps around holding his gut until one of his friends pats him on the shoulder. He then regains a fraction of his HP and can fight again. If you get hit enough in danger state you will then die, which only happened to me because there a billion enemies attacking at once.

Combat was fun, except for the part when you're fighting five or more enemies at once. My main complaint about the combat is that there are too many enemies in battle at once. You can lock on to a specific one to make things easier, but even then the camera kind of goes wildly out of control so it's not always worth doing. Focusing on a single enemy can work, but you tend to start getting hammered on by four or five others. It definitely doesn't help that your partners AI is horrendous and even if you stand directly next to them they won't always help you back up. The tons of enemies in a battle issue was compounded for me by how often enemies re-spawned in the overworld.

Check out all the nothing!

So now let's talk about the world. In this demo it was super bland. Like I said you're in a wide open plain. There are some sizable bodies of water and a forest with a lot of boulders but for the large part it's an open plain. You know what's exciting about an open plain? Nothing. It wouldn't have bothered me so much if the whole place wasn't so god damn huge. It takes forever to run anywhere. Yes I realize you can probably ride Chocobos around in the main game, but they definitely weren't in the demo so it was excruciatingly slow.

I will say the the game looks gorgeous despite having some real serious pop-in and frame rate issues. I'm sure all of that will be ironed out by the time the game is released though. What upsets me is that this game has been in development for nine years at least. I should realistically be praising everything about this game, but all I have to say is that I hope the full retail product is better than the demo. Sure, the combat is fun, but it got stale pretty quick. The full package will have more variety so I'm not super worried about that. The huge open world full of nothing is a very large concern to me though, because I hate that in games. There's no purpose to making a huge world if you're not going to put anything in it! Then there's the characters. For a game that's supposedly all about characters bonding and hanging out they sure didn't show off a whole lot of that! I don't know. I so desperately wanted to be in love with the demo, but I just couldn't do it. I hope that Final Fantasy XV is an excellent game.

MORTAAAAL KOMBAAAAAAT!

Despite the fact that I have to finish Bloodborne, and Type-0 I'll continue to play Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate and Chrono Stone as well. However, I'll obviously need to play Mortal Kombat X when it comes out in a few weeks.

I feel all talked out this time, so I'll just end it here. Have a good month, and see you next time!

Game Time - August 2014

I played a whole lot of the Inazuma Eleven series over the past two months. In fact, I beat all four games in the series that have been released in English so far. So far I've probably played for a grand total of 300 hours, and I still have so much more left to do. So yeah, I played through all of Inazuma Eleven 3: Bomb Blast, and Inazuma Eleven GO: Shadow this month.

Other than that I played through a majority of Xillia 2, and I keep changing my opinion of it. One minute I feel like it's a decent game, and the next everything about it really upsets me. Hopefully by the time I beat it I'll have a solid opinion.

Since the Inazuma Eleven games are long, and Xillia 2 is a million hour long RPG I didn't play a whole lot of other stuff this month, but I did manage to play a little bit of the InFamous: Second Son DLC. I like it so far, but I don't know how much longer I'll feel that way... It's got some interesting design choices.

InFamous First Light

I thought that Fetch was an amazing character in InFamous: Second Son. She was pretty much the only character besides Delsin that had solid development. She had gotten into some trouble with drugs, but was recovering. Plus, her neon powers were amazing. So it's only natural that I'd purchase the DLC where you play as Fetch and learn more about her backstory. Somehow I feel like I got swindled out of $15...

Yes, First Light has you playing as Fetch. It takes place months before Second Son when Fetch was first brought to Curdun Cay, the conduit prison. She's being trained to control her powers and in the process of doing so she's forced to tell the story of what happened to her brother. You get to play those sequences, and those are the best part. You get to run around Seattle as Fetch, who unsurprisingly has the same Neon powers that Delsin stole from her. The story is what I like, not so much the playing part...

At least it has a sick logo?

When doing missions in Seattle you can do side missions, just like in Second Son, except that they're all super lame. In order for Fetch to get skill points you have to collect neon gas. You can just run around and collect it, or you have to chase it during race events. You can also do some sweet neon graffiti. It's not exactly the most stellar content, especially when it's been taken almost directly from the main game. Delsin couldn't run races, but who would want to do that anyways, because it's lame. Running around Seattle is lame, but the story missions almost make up for it.

What really throws me off about this DLC is that when Fetch isn't telling her story you have to play through battle arenas in Curdun Cay. Enemies will show up, and sometimes you'll need to run over a hostage in order to rescue them. These types of battle arenas are generally bad filler content in games, so the fact that they're one of the main pieces of content in this DLC is more than a little upsetting.

Fetch can make some awesome neon graffiti.

I can see this being an amazing DLC for people who don't own Second Son, because it's standalone. If I hadn't done all of this same stuff as Delsin for around 12 hours earlier this year I might think First Light was an amazing purchase for just $15. However, since I did play Second Son when it first came out this just seems like a quickly thrown together cash grab I was tricked into getting because Fetch was a solid character in the main game. I'm interested in seeing her story through, but I can guarantee I won't be doing all the optional missions, and I'll fight in the battle arenas as little as possible.

Tales of Xillia 2

I had a lot of problems with the first Tales of Xillia, which you can read all about here. A lot of the problems I had with the first game are still present in Xillia 2. The story doesn't make a whole lot of sense, the areas are wide open (They're literally the same areas), and you're always told exactly where to go. On the other hand the characters are all marginally better, and the battle system is still super fun.

To me Xillia 2 feels like it's either cut content from the original game, or a very large story expansion. It has a brand new main character named Ludger Kresnik. For some inexplicable reason he can't talk. I'm a fan of silent protagonists in games, but in this case it's very out of place. All the other characters talk a whole lot. It wouldn't be as weird if characters didn't speak directly to him in ways that warrant a response. Apparently there's a story reason he doesn't talk, but I have seen no evidence of that and I'm around 40 hours in.

Ludger can't talk, but he can sure shoot pistols.

Other than Ludger's weird silence the story characters are all pretty good. One of the new characters the game introduces is a little girl named Elle. Normally children characters in games are obnoxious, but something about Elle makes her very endearing. She is lost and was separated from her father, but is constantly trying to fulfill a promise to him. It helps that she carries around Ludger's super obese cat Rollo, who I am absolutely in love with.

What bothers me about Xillia 2 the most is that the writing in it is super inconsistent. The game had a strong beginning, but a few hours in everything fell apart. It was almost like a completely different set of writers were put on the game for a few hundred pages of the script. At some point the characters start throwing out all kinds of terms as if you should know them when in reality you don't know what the hell is going on at all. Within the past few hours it has gotten better, but I still feel like there's something missing. It doesn't help that the game has serious pacing issues. It's separated into chapters and at the beginning and end of each you're given a ton of sidequests to do. People like me will do them all, which takes around two to three hours. So you're taking breaks from the main story for hours at a time when you don't even know what's going on in the first place.

All hail our lord and savior, Rollo.

Just like with the first game this makes it sound like I totally hate Xillia 2, when I don't. The battle system is super fun and action oriented, but everything surrounding that needs a lot of work. The fact that Ludger can switch between dual blades, a sledgehammer, and dual pistols is cool, but it doesn't change anything drastically. All of the exploration and sense of discovery is gone, which is something I really hope they fix in the next Tales game. It will help that they're not going to be reusing all the same assets again...

Inazuma Eleven 3/GO

I played and beat the first two Inazuma Eleven games in July. I then continued to play Inazuma Eleven 2 until all of my players were level 99, which took around 85 hours. For some reason I then decided to import a 3DS from England in order to play Inazuma Eleven 3, and Inazuma Eleven GO. Inazuma Eleven 3 continues the story of the first two games and acts as a finale to the trilogy. It's mostly the same as the previous two, but layers a few new mechanics on top of everything. Players get tired more quickly and the amount of TP players have for special moves was greatly decreased. It also added the ability to chain shots together, which was very handy in a lot of situations.

My favorite part about 3 though is that it's about an international soccer tournament, so you get to see the game's representation of countries other than Japan. The British team is super fancy, the American team stays in a junkyard, and the Italian team all sound like they're trying to impersonate Mario. It's an amazingly harmless view of the world's countries that only comes off as slightly offensive. It helps that since it's pretty much an anime version of soccer, so it takes itself very seriously. There's no chance they were trying to make subtle jokes or anything.

In Inazuma Eleven 3 the story team is the best!

From Inazuma Eleven 3 I moved right on to Inazuma Eleven GO, which focuses on a mostly different set of characters. Ten years passed after the original trilogy, so now all the characters I thought were cool from the first game have grown up and are around my age (24). What's cool is that they are actually an integral part of the story, because they have to pass on their knowledge to the next generation of players. What sucks is that I'm not really a fan of most of the new characters. The main character in particular I find to be insufferable. His name is Arion Sherwind, and he's super upbeat like Mark was. Unlike Mark however, Arion is super emotional. He truly believes that soccer as a sport has feelings, so he's always worried about making soccer sad. Yeah, that's a real thing.

There are a few characters I like though like Viktor Blade, who inexplicably has a Russian accent. In fact all of the characters talk with accents. These kids all live in Japan, so why does each one have a different accent? Maybe they were like that in the original Japanese, but even then it still wouldn't make sense. It also helps to make the voice acting extra awful, when it wasn't even that great in the first place.

I really wasn't feeling the players in Inazuma Eleven GO...

Inazuma Eleven GO changes the series completely, because it was the first game made specifically for the 3DS. Instead of being sprites everything is completely in 3D. It makes everything look awesome, but there are far less special moves for your players to learn. I've heard that Inazuma Eleven GO 2 has a whole lot more special moves, so I hope the lack in this game is because of the hardware switch. Due to the shift to 3D the actual soccer matches feel and play a lot differently as well. You can no longer pass to anyone, because the ball won't pass right through opposing players. You have to hold the stylus down in order to kick it over their heads. They also added a mechanic that gives certain players access to fighting spirits. They are literally spirits that the players summon in order to become much stronger.

When you have a fighting spirit summoned on a player it's almost impossible for them to lose the ball, and their shots are far stronger than they normally would be. The downside is that the players can only have the spirit summoned for a certain amount of time, and while the spirit is summoned they become tired much more quickly. It adds a new dimension to the game, because you not only have to worry about the stats and elements of an opposing player. You now also have to worry about the stats and element of the fighting spirit that player has as well. When you go against the computer the AI isn't the best, so you can usually steamroll them with whatever you have. However, I think that once I can play a human being the fighting spirits will be much less effective.

Fighting spirits are a cool new addition to Inazuma Eleven GO.

I have now beaten all of these Inazuma Eleven games, but I am still leveling up my teams in both 3 and GO. You'll probably hear me talk about the games a lot more in one form or another, because I still think about the series far too much for my own good.

The Storm Begins

It's a good thing I beat all the Inazuma Eleven games, because the fall game storm is upon us. From September up until around March there is a nonstop stream of games coming out that I don't know I'll be able to keep up with.

I still haven't beaten Xillia 2 and Dangonronpa 2 for the Vita will be arriving at my house tomorrow. Then a week after that I'll have Destiny. The trend continues from there when a new game comes out weekly, and sometimes two games come out a week. It's going to be an action packed fall and I'm very excited for it.

I'd keep going on, but I really have to get on Xillia 2 or it's never going to get finished. See you all next time!

     -Manny