A Week of Gaming

This week marked my first week of complete freedom in quite a long time, and to celebrate it, I decided to strap myself to my gaming chair and plow through some of my monstrous backlog.  Currently, according to Microsoft Excel, I have over 120 games that need to be played across the Gamecube, Wii, PC and newly acquired PS3.  Since we are nearing the end of the week I have decided to sit back and re-evaluate the games I have played, in a sort of brief collection of thoughts that will sum up my experiences.

But first, I want to bring attention to the incredible Steam winter sale that is going on right now.  I told myself at the beginning of the sale that I wanted one game, Dark Souls, and nothing else.  After 8 days I have bought the following: Killing Floor, The Stanley Parable, Hard Reset, Payday 2, The Binding of Isaac, Counter Strike: Global Offensive, Dead Space 2, Dishonored, System Shock 2, Orcs Must Die 2 and finally, Dark Souls.  Needless to say I've gone a bit sale crazy, but I couldn't be happier.  Now, onto the games I've played.

The Stanley Parable

"The End is Never The End."

The Stanley Parable is one of most unique games I have ever played.  Remember the point in Portal where you break free from the test chambers and begin running around the inner workings of the Aperture Science laboratories?  Of course you do.  The way Stanley plays out reminds me very much of that point in Portal.  You play as a man named Stanley, who is just another office worker, paid to press buttons over and over and over for the rest of his dull, repetitive life.  One day he comes into work to find that none of his coworkers have showed up, and it is up to you to find out what is going on.  As far as gameplay goes, you are allowed to control Stanley's movement and interact with certain objects by pressing E, that's it.

You get to be this guy! Woo!

There's not much else to say about this extremely short indie game.  It is a game about choice in video games, which it accomplishes by giving a very short linear path to follow to the main ending with many optional branching paths to take en route to different outcomes.  It's cleverly written, brilliantly narrated, and just a joy to experience.  After roughly 1.5 hours of playing, I figured I had completely beaten the game, only to venture to Youtube and discover that I had only seen 7 of the 18 possible endings.  Totally worth the $2 I spent on it.

Bastion

In an effort to knock off two games in one day, I booted up Bastion next with the hope of rushing through it to knock it off my list.  First, just listen to this incredible music.

Bastion is a game whose atmosphere, soundtrack and narration draw you in exceptionally well.  The combat, which is really the only part of the gameplay, didn't do it for me.  I think the sheer amount of enemies they throw at you much of the time makes the fighting devolve into a spam festival, and only during the tougher single enemy encounters did I get any sort of satisfaction because they required an ounce of strategy.  I enjoyed the evasion rolling mechanic, and when they replaced it with a jump later in the game I was intrigued until they forced me to complete a jumping segment, which was one of my least favorite segments of any game in recent memory.  I swear the 'Kid' jumps whenever he wants and not when you press the space bar.  Overall though, it was an enjoyable 5 hour ride that I probably will never revisit.

Bioshock Infinite

Alright let's get the hyperbole out of the way first.  This game is one of the best games I've ever played. I enjoyed Bioshock and I thought Rapture was a beautiful world to explore, but I thought the gameplay left too much to be desired.  Bioshock 2 was a letdown as it was the same gameplay from the first, but without the refreshing new world to explore and a weaker story.  Bioshock Infinite, however, matched and greatly exceeded my expectations coming into the game.

First of all, the game has a saving feature that doesn't require an online membership, so it's already leagues ahead of Bioshock 2.  Moving on...

Mmmmm, delicious trailer.

There are in general many tweaks and additions to the gameplay that make it more balanced and enjoyable.  All of the vigors (formerly known as plasmids) and guns are viable options throughout the entire game, making the combat varied and mostly entertaining.  There's a sprint mechanic making the action more fast paced, and many of the menial mini-tasks from the other games like hacking are now done by an AI controlled ally.  One of the most enjoyable upgrades to the combat actually stems from the world itself, in that now battles take place not in cramped corridors, but in huge open areas that often consist of multiple levels and moving airships.  You can traverse these levels during a fight by use of skylines, which are rails that your character can latch onto and ride on like a roller coaster.  The skylines are exhilarating to use and leaping off of them onto grounded enemies for a surprise attack never gets old.  While the shooting is mostly unchanged and still a bit clunky, these additions make combat actually enjoyable throughout the game.

Even with these positive changes, the gameplay is far from the best aspect of Bioshock Infinite.  What really sets the game apart is the thrilling story and complex world of Columbia that it takes place in.

The colorful city of Columbia

The story grips you immediately, carries you along an emotional roller coaster and concludes with one of the most brilliant endings I've ever seen in a video game.  Truly a marvel of modern gaming.

Miscellaneous Adventures

Ah no, Miscellaneous Adventures is not the title of a game. But alas, I found myself playing through some other games to kill time in between the story heavy games mentioned above.

Killing Floor is a multiplayer zombie killing game that seems like a mix between Left 4 Dead 2 and the Nazi Zombie mode of Call of Duty.  It's a slower paced game that dumps you in a map with your online teammates and requires you to survive a set number of waves of enemies.  The catch here is that you need to continue to buy ammo, weapons and armor which are available at a shop that is located at various points in the map.  Thus, in order to win you must work as a team, have a quick trigger finger, and make sure you get to the shop before the last zombie in a wave is dead!  Although exhilarating, running around the map with a weak weapon and a small knife with hundreds of zombies chasing you means certain death.  Also, who doesn't love killing gingerbread men, reindeer and Santa zombies?

Xenoblade Chronicles is my epic RPG choice of the winter, and when I say epic I mean epic.  Currently I am on the beach of an ocean that rests atop a colossal ancient titan that is frozen in time, who happens to be standing in an even bigger ocean.  I mean come on, it doesn't get much cooler than that.

The Eryth Sea, where your social life comes to die.

Well, time to go back to my backlog.  I think I'll wade through Grim Fandango next (with a walkthrough of course). The puzzles in that game are next to impossible without a walkthrough.  One of the more intuitive puzzles in the game has you ask a clown to make you two dead worm balloon animals, which you then take to a packaging room to fill with foam packing material, which you then shove into a mail tube chute so it clogs up a mail processing machine, which allows you to turn the deadbolt on a door leading to the machine that is now being fixed by a demon mechanic, allowing you to enter the room at a later time so you can stick a playing card that has been hole punched in one of the tubes so you can intercept a letter that gives you the scoop on a new client.  Ridiculous..