So if the most disappointing category is a list of games that should have been better, the most surprising category is the opposite. These are games that were better than they should have been. Just as disappointing is about falling short of expectations, these surprising games exceeded expectations and, in some cases, were among the best games of the year.
After the jump, the ten most surprising games of 2015. Continue reading →
Calling a game disappointing arguably has more to do with me than the game itself. Disappointment isn’t an inherent quality. It can’t exist without some sort of expectation in the first place. In many cases, these games are sequels, or the creations of developers with proven track records, or entries in established genres, or games with promising beginnings. But for various reasons, the central fact about these games is that I had personally hoped they would be better.
After the jump, the ten most disappointing games of 2015. Continue reading →
A lot of the Fallout 4 conversation is about how it compares to The Witcher 3. What an odd comparison. The Witcher 3 is high fantasy with a predetermined protagonist in a very specific story that focuses on character development and good writing. Fallout 4 is pretty much the opposite of all that.
The more appropriate comparison is to Xenoblade Chronicles X. They have a lot in common, including a blank slot where you plug in your own hero. They both have an open world, mechs, sidekicks, character customization, an unruly world for you to settle, carefully calculated landscapes, quest list gameplay, stranger-in-a-strange-land storylines that you can pursue at your leisure, crafting, stylized combat.
After the jump, which one is for you? Continue reading →
We’re a year and some change from the 20 year anniversary of Lucasarts’ Outlaws. It’s been over five years since Red Dead Redemption. Call of Juarez: Gunslinger was two years ago. Are videogame Westerns a thing of the past? Or are there any Western games we’ll look back at fondly in the years to come?
After the jump, saddle up! Continue reading →
Tony: Today I’ll be playing Blood Bowl against my friend Brian Haskell, whom I’ve played multiple times before and never beaten. He’s like a Blood Bowl machine. On the other hand, I’ve only seen him play the Norsemen, who seem pretty OP. That’s a thing about Blood Bowl you’ll either love or you’ll hate; the races have a delightful pre-Eurogame asymmetry. One of our friends picked the defenseless halflings in our last league. After some hilariously one-sided matches, we started calling them “garlic knots.” Garlic knots might have been more challenging opponents.
In this league, I’ll be playing the fast, skilled anthropomorphic rats known as Skaven, and Brian will be playing, uh, Corn Demons? Ha ha. Brian’s the Corn Demons.
Brian: That’s KHORNE Daemons, as in Khorne the Blood God, Lord of Skulls, thank you very much. Although I did make their uniforms yellow and tried to work in a pun about HFCS into their team motto. (I failed.) Like you say, I’ve been stomping you into the dirt with the Norsemen since you joined the fracas, so to stop all the OP talk I’m going to stomp everyone into the dirt with a team that’s completely absent the Norse’s bread and butter, the Block skill, at least as a rookie team.
After the jump, wait, why are we playing Blood Bowl? Continue reading →
My friend Gordon Cameron has assembled on his Flickr account an amazing assortment of ads for old-school CRPGs, from back in the days of these things we used to have called print magazines. Do you remember those? If you do, I bet you remember some of those ads. If you don’t, take a look at how we used to have to advertise games before the days of Game Informer articles, IGN exclusives, and YouTube let’s plays!
The latest pick for the Quarter to Three Classic Game Club, chosen by WarpRattler, is Monolith’s cult classic TRON 2.0. Developer Monolith was at the top of their game when they released it in 2003. This was the Monolith that gave us No One Lives Forever, putting that same level of world-building, charm, and personality into the TRON universe.
WarpRattler explains why he picked it:
my dad found a copy at TJ Max (???) on clearance and bought it for me, but it wouldn’t work on my computer. I would’ve been…fourteen or fifteen at the time, I think? The game had been out for at least a couple of years. I later ended up giving it away to a friend without ever getting to play it, and my current copy came from a thrift store earlier this year.
Oddly enough, I did play the Gameboy Advance spinoff when I was younger. From what I’ve heard, it turns out some of the promo materials I got for TRON 2.0 from Comic-Con waaaaaaaay back when I went in, I think, 2003 ended up involving concepts that weren’t in the final Monolith game, but did end up in the GBA game.
TRON 2.0 is available for $9.99 on Steam. You’ll want to download the Killer App mod, which requires the unofficial 1.042 patch, and works on either the Steam or retail versions. The mod combines a couple of popular visual mods, adds in content (all for multiplayer, I think), and visual upgrades from the Xbox port, and offers widescreen support and a few other tweaks.
If you want to play TRON 2.0 and participate in the conversation, join the discussion thread here. Click here to see the earlier picks for the Qt3 Classic Game Club.
I’m not in the habit of recommending, much less playing, early access games. I’d just as soon wait until a game is finished before playing it. It makes no sense to me that I’d jump into some form of entertainment while it’s still being made, any more than I’d eat lasagne before it’s been baked or move into a house before the roof was in place. “Hey Tom,” Joss Whedon might ask, “do you want to watch Avengers 2 now? I haven’t shot all the scenes, and the ending isn’t in yet, and there’s no CG yet for The Hulk. But here, you can watch what I’ve got so far!” What kind of deal is that? Why wouldn’t I wait until the movie comes out? Besides, I have plenty of finished movies I could watch.
It’s no different with games. So why would I play Offworld Trading Company, which enters public beta today and is available for $40 on Steam?
After the jump, it just takes one moment of weakness. Continue reading →
Okay, this category might be a bit of a stretch, but I like to end the yearly lists on a positive note. So this is a list of smaller games that deserve more recognition. But I’m not sure there’s a good metric for sufficient recognition, so consider this me just going, ‘Hey, have you heard of these games? If not, check them out because they’re really good!’
Plus, I didn’t get around to writing up full reviews for most of them, so this will have to do instead.
After the jump, ten games you probably overlooked in 2014. Continue reading →
Overrated is a loaded term. It looks good in a headline. It’s often used for no purpose other than to goad a reaction. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t useful. When I call a game overrated, I don’t mean it’s bad, that the reviews were wrong, that the people who liked it were dopes, or even that I didn’t like it. It just means I’m surprised more people weren’t more critical, that the conversation wasn’t more often about ways the game could have been better.
After the jump, the ten most overrated games of 2014. Continue reading →
So if the most disappointing category is a list of games that should have been better than they were, the most surprising category is the opposite. These are games that were better than they should have been. Just as disappointing is about falling short of expectations, these surprising games exceeded expectations and, in some cases, were among the best games of the year.
After the jump, the ten most surprising games of 2014. Continue reading →
Calling a game disappointing arguably has more to do with me than the game itself. Disappointment isn’t an inherent quality. It can’t exist without some sort of expectation in the first place. In many cases, these games are sequels, or the creations of developers with proven track records, or entries in established genres, or games with promising beginnings. But for various reasons, the central fact about these games is that I had personally hoped they would be better.
After the jump, the ten most disappointing games of 2014. Continue reading →
This week the Qt3 Podcast team takes a break from podcasting to do some streamcasting Twitchcasting…uh casting. Whatever. I’m old. I’m not hip to your crazy jive talk.
Bottom line is that instead of a podcast I streamed some Dragon Age: Inquisition so go watch it and marvel at what a crappy mage I am. I promise to get better at talking and playing at the same time so forgive me if I sound more incoherent than usual.
I don’t normally keep playing games after I’ve written about them. That’s just the nature of writing about games as a job. You experience them, you process them, you mostly move on. But as I look back over the games I played in 2014, I realize I spent an inordinate amount of time with games from 2013 and 2012. Guild Wars 2, Grand Theft Auto V, Diablo III, and Marvel Heroes were significant parts of 2014 for me. If they weren’t so obviously games from other years, they would most likely be on this list. In fact, one of them is, but I think it earned its place.
I spent a lot of 2014 with boardgames. I’m tempted to extend my fanatical platform agnosticism to include boardgames. But ultimately, I can’t reconcile the fact that boardgames are such a different type of experience, with unique advantages and disadvantages. I still intend to write about boardgames, but I’ve decided it’s proper to hang a curtain — not too thick a curtain, but a curtain nonetheless — between videogames and boardgames.
I fell out of love with the iOS as a gaming platform this year. Not to say it doesn’t have some exceptional offerings and a unique niche. But as I sampled various iOS games in 2014, time and again I felt that it’s not a gaming platform any more, but a business model. And I’m not interested in the business model it’s pushing.
Conversely, something really clicked with the Wii U this year, even alongside the sexy shiny newness of my new Playstation 4 and Xbox One. Three of my ten favorite games of 2014 are Wii U exclusives. On top of that, I was delighted with Star Wars Pinball (a standalone spin-off of Pinball FX) and Hyrule Warriors (a Zelda-fied Dynasty Warriors). Try as I might, I can’t resist that Nintendo magic.
Finally, I wish I had gotten the chance to play Thief, Wolfenstein: New Order, Infamous: Second Son, Batman: Arkham Origins, Elder Scrolls Online, The Evil Within, Hitman Go, Valiant Hearts, Tropico 5, Costume Quest 2, Lords of the Fallen, Little Big Planet 3, and Lego Batman 3. But onward to the games I did play!
After the jump, the top ten games of 2014. Continue reading →
For your Let’s Plays, you don’t have to settle for hipsters who are no good at the game cutting wise for an hour. Or some cynical YouTube personality with an accent and an absurd pseudonym. Because Double Fine has launched a new series called Devs Play, which features someone good at a game sitting down to play with someone with unique insight into the game. In the first episode, Double Fine brand manager Greg Rice sits down with Westwood co-founder Louis Castle to play through the godawful infernally difficult 1994 Lion King game for the Genesis. It’s like director’s commentary for a movie, with an informed movie critic and the movie’s director!
Stick around for a cameo shortly before the one-hour mark. “My god, this looks hard,” he offers from his back seat. Indeed. Among the many things I learned from this excellent episode is that The Lion King is way outside the threshold of what I’ll tolerate in a game these days. 1994 was a long time ago. As Greg Rice notes, “It was a period when you’d buy one game and play it all summer and figure it out.”
The series continues with five more episodes to be posted weekly.
Check out the schedule after the jump. Continue reading →
