Happy New Year to all my readers! Here’s my year in review and what I’m looking forward to in 2014.
2013 was a pretty crazy year, and no I’m not the superstitious type. I think this year was the busiest I’ve ever been in my entire life. I also made the most money in my entire life throughout 2013; granted, that’s not saying much. I would have liked a little more time to myself to play some games I wanted to play, but working for some extra cash on video games isn’t such a bad deal.
This year I worked on a few great games and a number of shitty or frustrating games. All in all, I worked on 14 games for IGN. I also fixed up two additional guides on IGN, but I wasn’t paid for them. I initially thought about transferring them over to this blog, like I did in the past with my older guides, but the better guide was only half completed by me. I suppose I could still transfer over the walkthrough. I really wanted to set up a wiki system on this blog for my guides, but it’s not that easy to do, and I don’t have much free time to research it all. Anyways, the games I worked on throughout 2013, a short opinion of the game, and a link to the guides I wrote for the games are below in alphabetical order:
- Aliens: Colonial Marines. This game was a very average shooter. It definitely pissed off a lot of people when it came out. It didn’t live up to the hype.
- Battlefield 4. It was pretty good at first, and then a ton of problems plagued the multiplayer. I still experience rubber banding like Bad Company 2’s initial release. They could have taken over Call of Duty with BF4, but they fumbled the shit.
- Crysis 3. I originally played this on PS3. It was short and sweet, unlike Crysis 2. I repurchased it for the PC when I set up my new gaming PC. I can run it at nearly maxed settings at around 50-60 FPS. A few things have to be turned down like water reflections and explosions.
- DmC: Devil May Cry. This was actually a pretty decent hack and slash. I played the other DMC games, so I knew what I was getting into. Most of the DMC fanboys were really pissed off with the direction the series went with this reboot.
- Fuse. A game nobody ever heard about, including me. It wasn’t too bad. New, short, and sweet. Definitely for those who want to play a shooter split screen.
- Gears of War Judgement. Another game that pissed off the fans. Most believed it was just a cash in. I didn’t think it was all that different from Gears of War 3’s gameplay. The campaign was a bit different since you played the story from four different people’s perspective.
- Gran Turismo 6. Fuck this game.
- Hatsune Miku Project Diva F. I wasn’t payed for this game, but there was very little to put in a guide. I loved the songs in this game, but it flared up my carpal tunnel.
- Injustice: Gods Among Us. It was a pretty good game. I’m not much of a fan of fighting games, though.
- Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity. BOOOOORING.
- Pokemon X and Y. Pokemon finally steps into the full 3D world. The story wasn’t nearly as good as Pokemon Black 2 and White 2, but the gameplay was still fun. It seems like the even generations (Gen 2, 4, and now 6) add a few new tweaks to the gameplay, but don’t add too many new Pokemon to the overall pool.
- Shin Megami Tensei IV. Not bad, but not great. It was a decent JRPG for the 3DS.
- Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 Golden. I was not paid for this game, but it was so great that I had to help fix up the guide. I picked it up at the start of 2013. I was decided between Ni No Kuni and P4G. Since I didn’t have any games for the PS Vita, and P4G sounded a bit more adult with the murder story, I went with this game. It’s definitely in my top 10 favorite games of all time now! It also opened me up to Persona and Persona 3 FES. I still plan on playing the two Persona 2 games when I have some free time.
- Splinter Cell: Blacklist. A really great shooter. You could play stealth or go full on assault. Lots of flexibility!
- State of Decay. I would have liked this game a whole lot more if it didn’t continue when you stopped playing, like a facebook app game or some shit. I don’t have time to play a little every day forever!
- The Walking Dead Survival Instinct. A really bland shooter I guess. Sort of felt like Left 4 Dead without all the special zombies. The graphics were really bad, though.
I also played a few other games without writing some guides. One of the biggest was Bioshock Infinite. It was pretty good, but I enjoyed the first more than Infinite. I also don’t understand how people can’t figure out the story! It’s pretty simple if you ask me. Maybe you guys are over thinking it! As I mentioned in the list of games above, I also played Persona 1 on my PS Vita and Persona 3 FES on PlayStation 3. The third one was pretty good, but the first one was really old school and tough. While checking out the PlayStation store games on my PS Vita, I also purchased and played Corpse Party. Now that was an interesting game! I also got around to playing Metro 2033 and Metro Last Light. Those were some of my first PC games.
As for the games I’m looking forward to in 2014…. well, I’m not entirely sure. There are only four games that I know are coming out in 2014 that I want to buy. They were supposed to come out in 2013, but they kept getting delayed and pushed back. The fifth doesn’t have a US release date yet, only a Japanese release date. They are:
- Watch Dogs
- Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster
- Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII
- South Park The Stick of Truth.
- Persona 5
How about all of you? What games did you enjoy last year (2013), and what games are you looking forward to this year (2014)?