Been a while since my last update, but no fear, for I have been slowly tackling the backlog(which currently stands this tall). No long reviews this time, as too much time has passed, and my memory ain’t what it used to be (ain’t what it used to be). But onto the games of the last year;

A year in review

(May 15-December 31)

• Owlboy - Fun little metroidvania. Little lacking in abilities that you would normally expect from a metroidvania, but it stayed fresh throughout


• Stardew Valley - Spent a good chunk of time maxing out my farm, which I enjoyed. The biggest mistake I made was at the start, choosing the fishing-farm. On the one hand, it allowed me to segment my farm animals from each other, and put the chickens/ducks and cows/sheep/pigs on their own respective islands, but it also took up a whole chunk of land I could have otherwise spent on actual farmable crops.


• Yonder: Cloud Catcher - Expected something in the vein of a stardew valley, with more concentration on exploration... Nothing like it. Felt like a chore the entire game, traveling across the world so slowly, collecting random crap. There is an image of him on some hovercraft, so I was expecting to get something to speed up movement the entire game, and nothing


• Sundered - Difficulty scaling seemed all over the place in this one. Lots of fun with the skill tree, and felt easy for most of the game, then there was a massive difficulty spike near the end, then became easy again


• Southpark: Fractured but Whole - Classic southpark humor, but felt more like you needed knowledge of the series than the first game. Also, the final hour or so just kept going and going, and not in a good way. Good gameplay though. The first was a little easy to abuse the system with (the effect damage kept stacking to insane levels), so was nice to see this one more balanced


• God of War (2018) - Game of the Year. Between story and combat, was amazing. Biggest flaw - not enough bosses. For a game series that was built on huge spectacles, you kind of expected more, and aside from the first and final, there weren't really any in between


• Watch Dogs 2 - Well, the story was improved upon the first, but that's not saying much. Still a lackluster game with interesting gameplay mechanics.


• Dragon Quest 11 - I said Southpark went on and on near the end... This game did that but the entire way through. Multiple points in the game, you felt you were reaching end-game territory, only for it to say "Nope". No spoilers here, but this is the type of game that has no DLC, but honestly felt like chunks could have been split off into separate paid DLCs. There were one or two interesting twists that I was more than a little surprised at, but for the most part, was a fairly template RPG story. The gameplay more than made up for it, with some characters having some interesting skill combos (<3 Erik's Divide with a multi-hit sword). If it wasn't for God of War, I'd have called this my Game of the Year
  Also, as an aside, one of the more bizarre combat mechanics, that served no real purpose, and confused me for the first few hours, was the ability to move around in combat... Walking behind enemies seems like it would give you an advantage, and allow for more critical hits, but really, it seems to just be there to allow for "cool screenshots", with no real gameplay benefit at all.


• Nier Automata - So much hype that I didn't really get behind. Gameplay had its moments, but the story dragged it down. For whatever reason, I just couldn't get invested in it. And as fun as the gameplay could be at times, with the right combo, it felt like dying was an afterthought. With an auto-healing augment-thingy, I never truly felt in danger. Now, I will admit, I didn't "fully" beat the game. I did the first Path with 2B, and about an hour of the second Path with 9S, but once I got to the camp again and needed to do the quests all over again, I gave it up. There just was no way I wanted to sit through a story that didn't grab me the first time, a second. So however good the third path was supposed to be, never experienced it.

(January 1-May 2)

• Monsters ate my Birthday Cake- cute little puzzle game. Definitely aimed more towards a younger audience, so no overly-difficult puzzles, but still, was a nice little distraction from all the action games I had been playing. If you can grab it for cheap, I recommend it. They constantly throw new monsters/abilities at you, so you never get the fatigue of sameiness that some other puzzles games tend to have.


• Spider-Man (2018) - Another game where the story is all-too predictable. I mean, you are supposed to be some years into Spiderman's career, and know of the different villains that he encounters, and yet we are supposed to play dumb to another one that is clear as day? The Mary Jane segments were a complete drag on the action, and really shouldn't have existed in the first place. Her only good gameplay segment was near the end when she directed spiderman in a stealth segment, but even that fell flat. Gameplay wise, it was solid, with plenty of gadgets to play around with, and a good variety of enemies to fight, each with their own annoying little requirements (also, screw the flying guys). Stealth segments felt weird, especially in the warehouses, where no matter how well you stealthed, after the first few enemies, they all became aware of your presence anyways, because technically they come out in waves, and... Yea, could have been done better


• Infested Planet - This one was a bit of a surprise hit for me. Didn't quite know what to expect aside from some tower defense against hordes, but the RTS elements of it really rounded it out. Now I want more. The campaign is a bit on the short side, but apparently there is a DLC to add rogue-elements, so might pick that up at some point


• Borderlands - with a recent update to make it more user-friendly (finally, a mini-map so my directionless ass won't get lost every 5 seconds), decided to give it another go. Played it almost all the way through a decade ago as a Mordecai, but decided to give it a go with Roland this time, and had a blast with it. So much so, I ended up playing the other two games immediately afterwards.
  Now, when a game has a pet/minion class, that's usually who I go for. It's why I chose Mordecai and his bird originally, and why I chose Roland and his turret this time (also why I chose who I did in the subsequent games). and while Roland's turret did help during some segments, it also felt completely useless during many others (seriously, whatever "shield" that thing is supposed to have does naught all). A motionless minion is great for when you are defending an area, but when you are on the move, and enemies are ducking behind cover, it just doesn't do enough. I think the biggest boon it gave me was the ability to run away from enemies, while it covered my rear, wiping out (or at least slowing down) my pursuers.


• Borderlands 2 - Diving right into the sequel after the first game, felt confident enough to choose a "hard" character, in Gaige. I considered Axton, but considering I just played Roland, and he seemed to be essentially the same, with only a few minor differences, went with the more "agile" pet class... But that was a mistake, as looking at her skill tree, I spent a lot of time focusing on her electric synergies, which considering the game has like 75% robotic enemies, had negligible effects. And it didn't help that since I was so focused on that build, I blew hundreds of golden keys looking specifically for those electric guns/grenades to maximize the skills. That said, once I learned from my mistakes (which wasn't until the DLC *cough*), found the Anarchy tree to be rather insane. With a one-shot shotgun, anarchy built up quickly, and all those shots just homed in on everyone I couldn't see, completely melting through them - Was great for arenas
  Edit: One other nitpick I forgot to mention - I was playing through the series with a controller, but Gaige does not do well with that style of gameplay, as the loot button is binded with the same button as reloading, so trying to grab/interact with things with fairly regularly cause to to reload, thereby killing off your entire stack of anarchy, and in turn, damage. There is a skill to bypass that, but you shouldn't have to put a skill into it just so you can play with a controller


• Borderlands Presequel - For whatever reason, this one gets some hate, that I don't understand, but personally, in some ways, I actually enjoyed it more than B2. Back in the day, when I used to play FPS, I did a lot of bunny-hopping, so the anti-gravity just felt natural to me. Jumping up and raining death from above, like I was back at home. Combine that with Jack's digi-clones, and you have a match made in heaven. They had a short life-span, but having them *boom* upon spawning, then double-*boom* upon death, due to their nova-shield, made it so it felt like the fourth of July 24/7. Explosions everywhere, it would have made Torgue happy.
  And that's just the one character's skills. Add in the laser guns, which I absolutely loved, the grinder, so that I could toss away useless weapons for LEGENDARIES, which have so much more of an effect than I ever realized in my time with Borderlands 2, and a story that painted Jack (The Borderlands 2 bigbad) in a completely different light (I mean, yes, he's still a sociopath, but you got to see the descent), and I question why people didn't absolutely love this game.


• Tales from the Borderlands - First off, ignore the illusion of choice, otherwise it will ruin the experience. The first two episodes, I just kept thinking "yea, but if I chose the other option, it still would have happened", but the story itself is really done well. Lots of fanservice going on, which I won't complain about, and it tied together many bits of the Presequel to Borderlands 2. All in all, an amazing conclusion to my month of Borderlands
  Edit: One other thing that I forgot to bring up was Ashley Johnson's voice work. If I can praise one of the biggest highlights of the game, it was any time her character talked. Simply adorable