October-November gameSlog

Boy, it's been an interesting bunch of weeks, with the election, legendary Dave Chappelle hosting SNL, my new job at an animal hospital, and of course, being frugal and beating games! The first update I want to share is how I've been doing on my 2-in, 1-out policy with games. This year, I bought 12 games. Checking my trophy list, I have completed 21 games, so I'm almost on schedule for 2016.

October: Overwatch, The Swapper (FREE PS+), Peggle 2 (FREE PS+), Saint's Row: Gat out of Hell (FREE PS+).

The Swapper is a space puzzle platform game, where you make clones of yourself and transport between them to collect glowy disco-balls. Space games always make me feel pretty lonely, and this game is no exception. After collecting a certain amount of balls, you can progress to the next area, and the are sentient rock-aliens that fill in the story. I completed about half of the puzzles without much stress, and never felt like there were any cheap tricks. Strangely, the trophies have nothing to do with completing the game - instead you find 10 secret rooms throughout the large map. With a walkthrough by my side, this was an enjoyable 90-minute venture to the 100%.

The girl on the left is normally creepier...

Peggle 2 has really tight physics - a necessity for a pachinko-style game. The game was originally a mobile game, and was actually made by a Seattle studio (woot-woot!). While there are 200+ levels containing various arrangements of blue and orange pegs, you can choose from 7 different characters with different special abilities to help clear them. I have to give the game proper respect for its sound design. The score has public domain music like Symphony No 9 and In the Hall of the Mountain King, but remixed so cleverly that you'll barely recognize it. To top it off, the sound effects for bouncing balls and special abilities match the characters and their themes very well.

Ohh, and you can fly in Hell, too!

Saint's Row: Gat out of Hell was a pleasant surprise. GTA games are massive productions, and certainly have their funny parts; Saint's Row games just don't take themselves seriously at all. There are several comedy songs (which I generally abhor), and the main characters are full of hilarious comments. I thought that making hell into a futuristic downtown was a super-cool idea, and the platnium trophy can be done in co-op!

November: Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, Bioshock 1 remastered, Bioshock Infinite DLC (PS3), Resogun (PS Flash sale $4).

I wrote about CoD: IW in another post, and just want to add that after finishing the awesome single player campaign, I am plagued by the final 20% of trophies in Zombies in Spaceland. The mode is generally pretty hard - in later rounds, despite hordes of zombies, one or two hits will put you down. The problem is that the trophies have you completing so many steps that I'll just end up boosting it, and probably having each player responsible for one of the many convoluted tasks.

The bees!!!

The remastered Bioshock 1 was a familiarly fun experience of a game with superior storytelling and world-building. A lot of alternate-dimension or futuristic stories take place, and don't analyze how they got there as well as Bioshock does, and that's a large part of the appeal of this game. On top of that, it's a very well-made FPS game that every gamer needs to experience.

The Bioshock DLCs really help stress the alternate-dimension theory that I never thought about until the end of Bioshock Infinite, since I am pretty dense when it comes to putting together game storylines.

Resogun is a very-pretty 3d-on-single-plane twinstick shooter. The developer Housemarque has a knack for making super-flashy games like this, as they also did Super Stardust HD for the PS3. Both games are super pretty, with simple mechanics, fun gameplay, and awesome soundtracks. "Super" is just the best word for all of this.

Now that I've reflected on 6 weeks of games, I can now focus on Final Fantasy XV, my most anticipated release this year, which should be arriving in just a few hours!