Best Games I Played
- Fallout: New Vegas
Synopsis: In the post-nuclear-apocalypse Mojave desert, you find yourself suddenly caught up in events that will shape the future. Choose between the New California Republic, the vicious Caesar’s Legion, the various gangs and tribes of New Vegas and the Mojave, or the mysterious Mr. House.
“Play Fallout: New Vegas,” they said. “It’s the best one,” they said. And I, fool that I am, did not listen—until finally, on a whim, I added it to my cart to get free shipping. I went into this expecting it to be basically Fallout 3 in a different place. I honestly thought I’d get bored with it halfway through and just stop. Turns out I was wrong.
New Vegas is the best Bethesda Fallout game right from the start. The opening cinematic that then blends seamlessly into the first scene sets up the world in a way that neither 3 or 4 ever bother to do. That cinematic and the fact that you can actually see New Vegas from your starting point but are forced to take the long way around turns the game from just following a green arrow without any real investment in your journey to actually being excited about your destination, which then makes you more curious about the world around New Vegas. And Goodsprings makes for a great starting point, a town that actually has people already living there (unlike Sanctuary), but isn’t so big or established that you don’t really feel like you can connect with the community (unlike Megaton). So the first major choice you have in the game, whether to defend the town or help the Powder Gangers, actually carries weight and makes you feel involved in the world right from the start. While there were a couple choices that I actually had to think about in 4, they always felt isolated and disconnected from the rest of the world and the larger narrative (and that B.S. boilerplate ending pretty much confirmed that feeling).
I could go on about the weight of the choices in the game, the interesting characters and side quests that actually feel important, etc. etc., but it basically boils down to, “Hey, you know the stuff you want from an RPG? This game does that stuff really well.” The main thing that sticks out to me about this game that may get overlooked in other discussions of it is that Fallout: New Vegas, on more than one occasion, legitimately surprised me. Stories that didn’t go the way I expected them to, dialogues that seemed to be going nowhere that actually led to quest chains, problems that I thought had only one solution that it turned I could solve in creative ways, and a couple jump scares that I did not see coming at all. Not to mention Yes Man, probably the best NPC in the game. Perhaps the biggest surprise of all was me surprising myself: I spent most of the 2nd act expecting to kill Mr. House, and ended up siding with him in the end. I don’t think any other game has managed to change my mind at such a late stage (granted, that’s partly because I put off even meeting Mr. House for a lot longer than the game intended, but still).
Does this game have mechanical problems? Absolutely. This is a crappy shooter, the crafting is unsatisfying (having played Fallout 4 first, 3 and New Vegas are necessarily disappointing when it comes to weapon and armor mods), and frankly, it gets a little exhausting to play after a while, which is partly why I didn’t get around to the much-lauded DLC on this playthrough. But I spent 3 WEEKS agonizing over whether to side with Mr. House. No other game has made me care enough or presented strong enough arguments to make me spend that much time on a decision. And the ending of the game actually made that decision (and many of the other decisions I’d made) matter, which is a heck of a lot more than I can say for 3 or 4.
And of course Bethesda has promised to never outsource the writing of their games ever again so…this is the best Fallout game we’re gonna get. Enjoy it. - Kingdom Hearts II.5 (off of Kingdom Hearts HD II.5 Remix)
Synopsis: You have a key which is also a blade and sometimes a heart and there are people with no hearts that are bad and you fight them and then other people with no hearts who are different then the first people with no hearts who are also mostly bad but for different reasons and you fight most of them too anyway and also worlds have hearts and there’s a big heart for all of the worlds too and you’re generally in favor of hearts staying where they’re supposed to so you’re basically just trying to make sure that happens. Also Disney.
The fact that you can play this game for a solid hour (assuming you do a bit of grinding) and encounter pretty much no Disney (other than the flashbacks to the first game) speaks volumes about how much better this game is than KH1. And it’s not just that there’s less Disney; it’s that what Disney there is is incorporated much more smoothly into the larger narrative, and is just less obnoxious overall (with the exceptions of The Little Mermaid and Pirates of the Caribbean, by far the worst parts of the game). The original content is just given much more weight than in KH1.
Mechanically, the regenerative mana bar and drive forms make for more dynamic gameplay, and while I don’t think I even bought healing or mana items after the prologue, having the moogle shops everywhere was a lot more convenient (compared to having to go back to Traverse Town ALL THE GODDAMN TIME to buy potions and ethers). The Gummi missions are less tedious and you don’t have to play through half the game before being able to skip them when revisiting worlds. All in all just a much more enjoyable and less grindy experience.
I would definitely recommend reading a plot summary of (or I guess playing if that’s your thing) Chain of Memories and 358/2 Days before playing KHII, as I found I was a lot less confused and more invested in the story after doing so, especially in regards to Roxas and Organization XIII. - NieR: Automata
Synopsis: Androids try to reclaim Earth from alien machines and also learn what it means to be human or maybe what it means to be not human who knows really.
While the game has some flaws (the melodrama and occasionally grindy gameplay being the biggest), there’s too much that this game does well, and too many moments where I literally said, “Oh my god I love this game,” to not unequivocally recommend it.
Having not played the previous NieR games, I had no problem jumping into the strange world since its strangeness is kind of the point. The writers are really clever in how they refer to events and info from the previous games: if you’ve played them, you’ll know what they’re talking about and it will deepen your understanding of the current narrative; if you haven’t, the references are vague enough to add a sense of mystery to the game without making you really feel like you’re missing out. (Although I would have payed more attention to Emil if I’d known he was from the previous games.)
Without getting too spoilerific, the recursion (especially from route A to route B) was excellently executed, and I honestly did not see that coming. Far and away the best recursive gameplay I’ve seen.
Endings C, D, and E (especially E) legitimately made me feel emotions.
Finally, it’s just a fun game. The chip system (oh man, having HUD elements be optional–so good) and variety of weapons give you plenty of combat options to experiment with (the combat is mainly where NieR draws comparisons with Kingdom Hearts, both on-the-ground and airborne, but the item-collection/crafting is also very similar), the environment is a lot more interesting than your typical post-apocalypse (YOU CAN RIDE A MOOSE), and there’s plenty of humor sprinkled throughout. - Pyre
Synopsis: In a sort of limbo space, groups of outcasts compete in ritual games to earn the right to return to the world.
Pyre is Supergiant’s most ambitious game yet, and for the most part that ambition pays off. The world is interesting, the gameplay is fun and has the usual built-in variety (and brings new meaning to the phrase “fantasy football”), and of course the mechanics and narrative are interwoven in the way only Supergiant seems to do. Ultimately, the story I was able to craft on my first play-through turned out pretty much exactly how I wanted, which is more than I can say for some other games that purport to let your choices affect the story. Oh, and of course Darren Korb’s music fits in perfectly as always.
All that being said, there is, if you’ll pardon the pun, a downside to the larger game. Not all of the world-building fragments are equally interesting, which makes reading through the increased mass of them occasionally quite dull. The gameplay, especially the travel, can get quite repetitive. The characters that make up the game’s large cast are also not all equally charismatic—a couple, frankly, are just plain annoying. And some of Korb’s lyrics are a little too specific to really be poetic. The overall effect of these faults, though, is relatively minor, and they can be chalked up to either a developer still learning the ropes of larger-scale game design, or maybe just the necessary trade-off of working on this scale.
In short, Pyre trades the short-and-sweet, tightly crafted feel of Supergiant’s previous games for a more lush, expansive style, and while that creates an unevenness in quality, it doesn’t feel frivolous or lazy. Though Transistor maintains its champion’s belt (I mean, that ending…gets me every time), Pyre is certainly a worthy addition to the Supergiant pantheon, and I have no reason to doubt that their next game will be any less than great.
Certain of Eventual Failure 