Best Games I've Never Played - Part I

According to a list I'm constantly updating, I've tried nearly 300 games in my "career" as a gamer which has spanned over more than two decades (and there's probably dozens I'm simply forgetting...). In this list you find a number of historic franchises (Zelda, Metroid, Diablo, Fallout, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, Uncharted, Need for Speed, Mario, Mario Kart, Call of Duty, The Elder Scrolls) and outstanding titles (GoldenEye, Biochock, Journey, Yoshi's Island, Ico, Paper Mario, etc.). But even as I played through some of the most amazing games the industry ever offered, I missed many of the greatest titles, according to the Interwebs, the world has ever seen. Now is the time to come clean...

This past August I bought Counter-Strike : Global Offensive on the PlayStation Network, which is the latest installment in the long-running PC franchise. Amazingly, as I bought it, I came to the realization that I had NEVER played a Counter-Strike (CS) game before. Not the original one, not CS : 1.6 or even CS : Source. The funny thing is that most of my friends and even my brother (sometimes) played it (I'm talking here about the first one) and I really enjoyed sitting there and watching them play. But I never played or was even tempted to play. I can't pinpoint exactly why, but if I had to guess, I'd say that I was intimidated by the skills and speed of everyone playing. I didn't think I could perform, so I chose to sit and watch.

In fact, except for GoldenEye and Perfect Dark on my N64, I almost never played FPS games before the GameCube came out. Of course I tried some of the classic games (Duke Nukem, Doom, Turok, Allied Assault), but I would rather play action, adventure or platform games. When I got my GameCube I played more of them (Time Splitters 2, Metroid Prime, Metroid Prime 2 and Halo at my friends') but still not that much compared to other genres. In fact I played a LOT more FPS's since I got my PS3 in 2008 than I've ever played before. Now I can say that I like the genre, but it's getting harder and harder to find some innovation.

That's where CS : GO came in. I won't lie, I don't play THAT much, but I really appreciate how there's no leveling up, no XP, no "perks", no unlockable weapons or no clear advantage for veteran players (except sheer experience) over "newbies". Weirdly, it was a breath of fresh air, even if I'm not very good and I'm having a hard time adjusting to the gameplay.

Next up : Final Fantasy VII

BaraChat's Games of the Year 2012 - Categories

For this year's Game of the Year awards, I've decided to do things in a simpler, more focused way. Last year I had 10 categories with about 5 nominees each and, looking back, I think I might have aimed a bit too high for my first year-ending roundup. After all, I'm not IGN, Gamespot or Edge Magazine, I can't realistically play - or even try - a hundred games per year. The fact that 2012 was clearly not as good as 2011, resulting in less games played this year, obviously has something to do with that decision. Anyway, I'll concentrate on the important stuff, eliminate some categories, maybe have less nominees (except for GoTY) and, if it's pertinent, add a few categories.

So far, what I have is :

• Game of The Year 2012
• Most impressive graphics (artistic AND/OR technical)
• Best story
• Most memorable gaming moment
• Best music
• Best sound design 
• Best game I haven't tried (yet)
• Most surprisingly good game
• Most disappointing game

It's not impossible I add more categories as the year comes to an end, but so far that's about all I have.

Gaming in 2012 : not what it used to be.

So I finally bought a new MacBook Pro, since my old MacBook - which was over 52 months old - started to show its age very quickly.

Now, having a decent computer in my hands, I decided to buy Diablo III, as I have been a big Diablo fan since the late 90's and spent probably upwards of 1000 hours on Diablo II alone. So I buy the game off Amazon (they had a 20$ off deal for Cyber Monday). I install it (it was a lot longer than I expected, but it's a huge game, so it's normal) and launch the game so I can start playing. Usually things go pretty smoothly from there. You buy a game, you play it. As you have done for the past 25 years. Simple.

Well not with this game. Since it's an online game, I had to create a battle.net account, which I gladly did and create a gamer tag for Blizzard. Simple enough. But even as I lauched the game, it didn't work because I had to activate the full game with the CD-key. I start to think : "Well why this wasn't done while I was installing the game with the DVD? Wouldn't that have been a million time easier?" But hey, no biggie. I enter the CD-key on the Battle.net website. Then it demands I enter my postal code. I do, but it doesn't work since I live in Canada and battle.net has decided without even asking me that I lived in the United States. Seriously?

All right, so let's just change the country on my account settings, right? How hard can that be? For anyone who has used the Internet in the past 10 years, changing account settings is the easiest thing you should ever have to do, unless there's a credit card involved or something. I go into my account settings and it says I can't change the country without asking Blizzard via customer support. Read that line again. And again. WHAT THE FUCK? Seriously? I delve deeper into my account settings and realize I can change the billing information of my account, country and all, in about 12.3 seconds. Which I do. But this doesn't change my account's country. I phone Battle.net support and the machine tells me I have a 20 minutes wait before I can speak to a human being. The other option is to create a ticket, a message to the customer service thing, so they can change my country. But they need governement-issued documents. Read that again. And again. Seriously? I do as told, and now I'm waiting.

So I bought a game like any good customer, paid Blizzard so I can play a f******g video game on my computer and I STILL have to jump through hoops to change my country? Honestly, what the fuck is wrong with them? I can enter and change billing information on the fly - like on any freaking website accross the Internet (I just did on Apple, credit card and all, and it took less than 30 seconds) - but I have to PROVE that I live in Canada with government-issued documents? How fucking pointless and absurd is that?

 It's a video game, for Christ's sake, not some classified FBI material. Why does it have to be so complicated? I bought your freaking game, just let me play it.

I bought a game that I can't play because the online service is absurdly idiotic and pointless. Blessed be the times where you bought a game, popped it in the system and had fun with it. Now you have to jump through 15 administrative loops and waste away hours of your life to simply start up the game. Nice.

Thanks a lot Blizzard, you've effectively pissed a gamer who has been a loyal customer for the past 16 years.

Some epic conquest match!

Yesterday I slid Battlefield 3 into my PS3 for perhaps the second time in over a month, as I wanted some frantic online FPS action. I was all set to join a Team Deathmatch and let the bullets fly. Instead, at the last second, I decided that I would let the machine decide which type of match I'll enter. At first it put me in a Rush match. It went horribly bad, my team (and I include myself) was absolutely incapable of defending a single objective for more than half a minute. After the game, I quit and decided to retry the "random" thing on the menu (I confess, I've never liked Rush, I like the idea but I really suck at it). This time it chose Conquest on Golf of Oman with 300% tickets. I was in for something big.

The match itself was pretty damn long, nearly an hour. I had one of my best games in my short BF3 career (103 hours long). I finished 46-19, leading my team in points, shooting down 3 manned helicopters with a tank (one was on the ground), destroying at least 7 or 8 manned tanks, capturing 10 or more flags, nailing 3 killstreak bonuses ribbons, unlocking a MBT medal (worth 10k points) and a combat efficiency medal (for killstreaks, my fourth, also worth 10k points). And it was double XP week for Premium members, so I gained nearly 80 000 points in a single match!

Even with one of my best games ever on BF3, I only finished 3rd and we lost. Two guys on the other team were extremely good, one of them finished with a 64-10 and over 21k points before bonuses. Anyway, it was fun, I hadn't played that epic of a match in a looong time. I used to play Conquest a lot, recording more than a few great matches with great K/D ratio (along the lines of 32-10, 23-2, 28-6, 17-1 and somewhere around 20 1st place ribbons). But lately I've been more focused on TDM, having a lot of fun, but I was not as dominant with guns only (I think I only ever had one 1st place ribbon in over a hundred TDMs). Indeed, my K/D ratio had dropped from 2.2 when I hit level 45 (Colonel) and now it's 1.9.

It was nice to see I could still put up a good fight in Battlefield 3. :)

Sometimes I shouldn't listen to myself.

When Mass Effect 3 came out earlier this year, I kept telling myself that I wouldn't try it. After a few days, when the first reviews and players' reactions came around criticizing the game's ending like it ruined their lives and ran away laughing, I thought : "Oh well I wasn't going to play it anyway, so I don't care". And that might look like a very strange behavior, especially since I really enjoyed Mass Effect 2, awarding it close to a 9.5 out of 10. But I guess something about the end of the game really bugged to the point that I didn't want to play the third installment. And, to be extremely honest, I have no freaking clue what it is.

Now I'm glad I bought it. Very glad, I should say. It is turning out to be a very, very enjoyable game. I like how the story is developing and how unpredictable it is turning out to be. After 13 hours I feel like it might be a bit too long if I choose to do all the Side quests. I'm a big side quests fan, usually, but for this game I'm not so sure I want to... The quests are usually quite long and complicated, which is a good thing for the most part, but sometimes the whole thing can get heavy and wee bit tedious.

But overall, I must say I'm quite glad I trusted the clerk at Microplay, who assured me it was a fantastic game if you don't mind the ending. Now that there's a patch out which "fixed" the controversial ending, I might not even be aware that there was a "bad" ending in the first place.

I'm usually quite on the "trust your instincts and nothing else" guy, but this time I've been proven wrong. And it's a good thing.

The downfall of Resident Evil

I first discovered the Resident Evil franchise in the late 90's, when my older brother was playing through I think what was Resident Evil 2 or Nemesis (RE3). While I only watched and never played those games (they were my brother's), I eventually bought two of them for the GameCube : The Resident Evil remake and Resident Evil 0. I found both games to be very enjoyable, especially for their exquisite pacing. I've always enjoyed games with slow, thoughtful exploration, the fact that everything you find might and probably will help you survive.

Then came Resident Evil 4 which is, I think, one of the most important games (along with Uncharted, Halo, and Call of Duty 4 : Modern Warfare) of the last decade (2000-2009). That game was and still is a masterpiece in every sense of the word. I played through it 4 or 5 times and I never got bored of it. It's simply stunning. There's a perfect balance between each and every aspect of the game. Sure, it basically introduced the 3rd-person over-the-shoulder camera angle which became the norm in the following years, creating a more action-oriented package. But it never - repeat : never - got away from the usual survival factor, the scary sequences/enemies/monsters/bosses, the tense atmosphere, the careful exploration of every corner and cupboard for herbs and ammo. That game still ranks third on my personal list of the best video games of all-time, just behind Ocarina of Time and Metroid Prime and in front of All-Time Greats like Super Mario 64, GoldenEye 007 and Fallout 3 (that should tell you a lot).

Then came Resident Evil 5, which was a decent game, but it barely ever got a little scary. The only thing that got on my nerves the whole game were the Lickers B (Beta) and the giant insect things near the end (although there were only 4 or 5 of them). And the only reason was because they were so powerful and resistant to damage, not exactly "frightening". The inventory management was very crappy, the enemies mostly generic and the settings not exactly memorable. And Chris lost a lot of respect as a protagonist with his huge bulging arms and the infamous "boulder punching" sequence. To me, it felt as if the developers thought Resident Evil 4 was successful only because it was more "action-oriented", so they decided to aim for that. And I think it just lost the beautiful balance RE4 had established. Again, it wasn't a bad game at all - it was actually pretty good - but it felt like a step down from RE4.

Earlier this year was released Operation Raccoon City which was, for me, an insult to the Resident Evil franchise. Sure, it's a coop 3rd-person-shooter action spin-off, not a canon entry, but it clearly showed which way Capcom was heading.

Then I finally tried the Resident Evil 6 demo. I know you don't judge a game by its demo, because it IS just a demo, but this was something else. My older brother, who played all home-console Resident Evil games (except ORC this year) since the very beginning, told it best. His first words (in french, of course) were "This isn't Resident Evil" and then "Resident Evil 5 was good, but this is just wack".

Like any well-informed buyer, I read reviews and watched gameplay vids on the Internet to get a better idea. I was very, very disappointed with what I saw. It doesn't even look like Resident Evil any more. It actually made me sad. At the very least it seems like Leon's campaign is decent, but the other "campaigns" all look mediocre, if not plain bad. I might very well give it a chance for old times' sake, but this doesn't look promising at all.

Sure, it's Capcom's franchise and they do whatever the hell they want. And they will sell a lot because of the name only. But I know I'm not alone thinking "Well, here's another historic franchise ruined by modernity".

Sequels, hype and disappointment

In exactly 5 days*, Gearbox Software's Borderlands 2 will be released, and masses of gamers will flock game shops and websites to get their hands on a copy. In a way, I'll be one of them, since I've pre-ordered it back in June, when Canadian electronic store Future Shop had a E3 sale (4 E3-showcased games for the price of 3). However, as much hype as I have for Borderlands 2 - and I have a lot, since I love Borderlands so much it has a spot deeper in my gamer heart than any game this generation, even better ones - I couldn't help but think about the other over-hyped sequels of the past few years and get worried a bit.

Why? Because developers know sequels usually have a lot to live up to, and often try very hard (too hard?) to live up to their expectations and, even worse, gamers' expectations. And even when the critics applaud the sequel, giving it the same grade - or better - than the prequel, I usually find the original better.

The usual route for a sequel is "Bigger is better" where more explosions/guns/missions/treachery/quests/bigger boss fights/maps/powers/monsters/characters/fights/etc. means the game will likely be better. It is clearly not that simple.

Take, for example, inFamous, the 2009 PS3-exclusive open-world title where you play Cole McGrath, riddled with electric superpowers and has to choose whether he'll be good or evil towards citizens of Empire City while completing his missions. When inFamous 2 hit in 2011, with huge bosses, more powers, allies with other types of power (Ice & Fire), more varied enemies and less repetitive missions, most people thought it was a LOT better than the original. I didn't. Of course it had objectively more to offer, but more isn't necessarily better. I felt somewhat connected to the dark, unenthusiastic Cole of the first game, clearly not happy with the situation he was stuck in. The enemy, Kesler, was also a lot more interesting than "The Beast".

The same thing could be said of a lot of sequels. Only this generation, I thought Modern Warfare was vastly superior to both its sequels and Assassin's Creed II a lot better than Brotherhood (haven't tried Revelations). I also liked Arkham Asylum more than Arkham City (although City is objectively a superior game that I loved), enjoyed LittleBigPlanet more than LBP2 (still excellent though), Bioshock more than Bioshock 2 (superb as well), etc. And in some cases the sequel impossibly proved equal to the original, as we have seen with Portal 2 or Super Mario Galaxy 2. But in most cases, the original retains the new-IP "naïve" and "true" feeling of the game.

Why? I think it's because the first game usually has a LOT less expectations, and developers work almost without pressure (from the publisher, from the fans, from the critics and journalists, etc.) and put together a product closer to what they actually wanted to make. It will sound clichéd, but the original game seemingly comes from the heart and not the brain. Whereas there's too much "brain" in the sequels, and the final product often looks like an uneven mix of players' expectations and media pressure.

And I'm pretty sure that, in some cases, the sequel wasn't planned when the first game hit the shelves. And it shows. A lot more than what the developers were probably hoping. It seems like many of them decided to make a second game just because the first one worked, and not because the story or universe was meant to be continued or otherwise exploited.

*NOTE : This was actually written - almost all of it - 5 days before BL2 came out. It has been out for a week, I've played it for a few hours and really enjoyed it. More on that soon!