I posted this on Facebook, but there are people here who don't follow me there, so why not do a blatant copy/paste? So in the spirit of whoring as many comments as possible today ...
Starting in college, I started falling out of the video game hobby. It can get expensive to keep up with, and, uh, I didn't have a job, so I didn't have the money to play much aside from the occasional handheld point-and-click adventure title. But this year I decided to finally jump back into the game (pun intended), and it's turned out to be a good decision! I only have time to play on my days off, so I went through games pretty slowly, but might as well share what I played, because why not?
Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective (Nintendo DS): One of the best adventure titles for the DS. Ghost Trick has a solid story, good characters and sharp humor, but the real reason to play it is the clever puzzles. The object manipulation is pretty damn cool, and there's a great sense of accomplishment when you line up the solution just right and destiny is changed for the better. There are a couple of frustrating section (I especially disliked the stealth level); however, those blemishes aside, it's a damn good game, and one of the best for the DS.
999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors (Nintendo DS): Another one of those point-and-click adventure games, but this one is more traditional in format. It's basically a Choose Your Own Adventure story with puzzles. The story is good for the most part, but you can tell it's anime-influenced because it totally falls apart at the end. I also dislike that so much of it depends on a romance subplot that doesn't really work at all. The main scenario -- which is basically Saw if it were written competently -- is good and tightly-written before that, though. I do wish the puzzles were better. A bunch of them at the endgame are stumpers in the bad, esoteric video game way.
Pokemon HeartGold/Pokemon Black (Nintendo DS): Might as well lump the Pokemon games together. They're good Pokemon games if you're still into that. I played them like I play every Pokemon game: Collected the ones I liked, trained them up, kicked every trainer's ass and then never touched the games again.
Portal (Xbox 360): The perfect game to ease me back into console gaming. It's short, the mechanics are easy to understand but applied in clever ways, and the writing is sharp and funny. The way everything develops -- from the difficulty of the puzzles and the sinister tone -- is pitch perfect. A very clever accomplishment, but ...
Portal 2 (Xbox 360): ... Portal 2 crushes it. The best way I can describe it is that Portal is the tech demo, and Portal 2 is the real game. Everything is pushed to the limit in this sequel, all in good ways. There are new twists to the puzzles, all of which are clever and interesting. There are new characters, all of whom are hilarious and memorable. There is a much-expanded story, which never becomes dull. And this is one of the few video game worlds that feels alive to me, which is perhaps ironic given how broken and rusted it is. Everything about this game is wonderful; I'd say it is the best I've played this year.
Red Dead Redemption (Xbox 360): This is one of the reasons I wanted to get the Xbox 360. I love westerns, so playing through one seemed pretty awesome to me, and it does not disappoint whatsoever. I'm very skeptical when it comes to video game stories. There are few I've played where I'd say the story is legitimately good rather than "video game good." RDR is legit good. It's a great gray western story, with a memorable reluctant, flawed protagonist, and a wicked sense of humor. I love the setting, too. The decision to set this so close to the time when the frontier way of life was being left behind is great to me, and I'm surprised I haven't seen it more often in westerns. (But maybe I'm just looking in the wrong places.) The action is good, and while the missions can get repetitive, it never really gets old for me. I am of two minds about the ending: I love it from a storytelling point of view; it works perfectly in service of all the themes RDR hammers home. But from a gameplay standpoint, it's kind of dull and weird. But whatever.
Radiant Historia (Nintendo DS): A solid DS RPG. This is basically a Choose Your Own Adventure that acknowledges that everyone who reads those books totally cheats. There are two major storytelling mechanics at play here: 1) At several points in the game, you make choices that either continue the game or eventually lead to a bad end, and 2) Time travel. You can go back and replay choices, and there's also a parallel world at play you can jump to when you get stuck in the original world. These two elements combine to make progression through the game interesting, although there are a few instances where finding out what to do next is difficult. Everything else is mostly standard RPG -- story and characters are decent, and the battle system is fun. It's pretty satisfying to chain a massive combo and murder some lame monster.
Mass Effect (Xbox 360): Like it a lot, but good god, it has so many annoying flaws. It's glitchy as hell, the slowdown gets unbearable at times, the menu crawling is irritating, etc. That said, the characters, solid story and crazy awesome world building mostly make up for it. The world building is particularly impressive. An insane amount of depth is there if you want to pursue it, but through the course of normal conversation, the game subtly gives you all you need to know to understand the relationships between the various species in the universe. The battle system is OK, but I had much more fun flinging people around as an Adept than I did shooting stuff. I do like all the conversation stuff, though, and I listened to every bit of investigation dialog, even when people revealed stuff I already knew ...
Mass Effect 2 (Xbox 360): Takes care of just about every problem I have with the first game. The gunplay is more satisfying, the powers for every class are used in more interesting ways, the environments are more varied, there's more required interaction with your crew in battle, and on and on. The overall story is definitely thinner than the first game, but the way it builds toward the eventual suicide mission and pays off with you and your team storming the villains' base is such an amazing feeling. I did just about everything possible to prepare my team for that mission, and damn it feels good to kick everything's ass there. Everything about ME2 is bigger, bolder and better than the first game; it's so much fun from start to finish. This is up there with Portal 2 as the best game I played this year. Looking forward to Mass Effect 3 quite a bit!
Professor Layton and the Last Specter (Nintendo DS): Big fan of the Professor Layton series here. This isn't quite as crazy as Unwound Future, but I like that Level 5 doesn't try to make it as batcrap insane. It's the start of a new trilogy, so they're scaling it back to Curious Village levels of crazy. Anyone who has played any Professor Layton games knows the drill here: You progress by solving puzzles, and a mystery develops bit by bit. It doesn't do anything much different than previous Professor Layton games, but it doesn't really have to. The formula has basically been perfected by now. Just write a good, engaging story and throw some good puzzles in there, and it's cool. I did notice, though, that some basic puzzle types have been reused for a while now.
Saints Row: The Third (Xbox 360): Just a ridiculous, stupid pile of fun. It's absolutely dedicated to intelligent stupidity. Logic is thrown totally out the window; the story develops through whatever crazy set piece the developer decided would be awesome rather than any sense of coherence. It absolutely works, too. Throughout the whole game I anticipated that the jokes would get old, or Volition would be unable to top itself, but nope. Right until the very end, the game gets crazier and more fun. If there's one other thing this game is dedicated to, it's making sure the player knows that this is his or her world to screw around in. You get some crazy weapons right off the bat, and the toys you get afterward keep getting bigger and more awesome. I can't go on without spoiling my favorite parts of the game; just play it, even if you have an allergy to open world stuff.
Bastion (Xbox 360): A wonderful downloadable game that's also available for the PC. The action is a lot of fun and can get pretty damn intense at the player's discretion, the weapons are pretty cool, the visuals are colorful and really bring the world to life, and the narration. Damn, that narration. Bastion's story is mostly basic, but the way it's told is so cool. Basically, as you journey through the world, a narrator comments on what you do. He'll toss out bits of story, talk about the weapons you use if you show an inclination toward something in particular, hint at character motivation and so on. It sounds like it could get annoying, but as you're playing, it actually works to draw you more into the story. I really cared about all this stuff by the time I got to the first ending. (There are at least two endings, and I haven't unlocked the second one yet.) The quality of downloadable games increases by the year, and Bastion is among the best.
So that's it! Right now I'm playing The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, but seeing as I barely beat the first dungeon, there's no way in hell I'm finishing that before the year is out. I've also got Batman: Arkham Asylum and L.A. Noire waiting in the wings, and Mass Effect 3 already pre-ordered for when it comes out in March. I'll be busy for months to come ...
