Dishonored

Dishonored holds the spot for the last game I finished in 2014, effectively ending this exercise.  I might keep track still, but seeing as this is coming a month late ... I wouldn't count on me.

Dishonored was in my Steam library for a long time, and it took the convenience of it being a free game with Xbox Gold for me to finally play it.  Keep in mind the review comes a bit late, but let me see if I fire up the engines on what I loved and hated about this game.

I was compelled to play it, you are part of a plot where the queen is killed and her daughter kidnapped in front of you.  Standing accused, you leave a trail of bodies as you hunt for the girl and take your bloody vengeance.  But you end up saving her rather soon into the game only to be betrayed by your allies because "the public would never accept blahblahblah".  So basically, just about everyone dies in the end and you take your bloody vengeance once again.

The game plays like a mish mosh of a few games, call it an Arkham/Bioshock/Hitman - but a bad version of each.  There was no costuming, so figuring out the puzzle of an area didn't involve creativity.  There are upgrades that didn't really matter.  I gave up trying to perfectly stealth missions because it just wasn't enough fun to try again, invariably my missions would devolve into a shootout and everyone would end up dead because the AI wasn't great shooter AI.

Unfortunately, this gave me the 'bad' ending.  After seeing me come home soaked in the gore of so many failed stealth missions, she decides that she's going to be a tyrannical ruler and butcher people who don't agree with her, just like me.  Ouch.

Driver San Francisco

This is the first of the Driver franchise that I've played.  It has similar free roaming elements to the GTA series, but you are confined to a vehicle and "shift" into other vehicles - effectively taking over the driver.  That said, they did do a fantastic job with car drifting/weight/road texture - it felt great.

However, this shifting mechanic quickly turns you from hero to villain as you begin carreening innocent commuters into oncoming traffic to fuel your own brand of brutal vigilante justice.  This isn't just a matter of innocents being in the crossfire, you are put situations where you must directly sacrifice multiple bystanders to do something as absurd as win a street race.

The story begins with Jericho's prison-break and a car chase, ending with you getting crushed by a giant semi.  This gifts you with increasing power to shift into other vehicles, and as lame as a story mechanic as this may sound, it actually works.  Spoilers below so be careful.  Gradually this shifting starts affecting your mind and you start having more and more strange episodes.  And then ...

Well - you're actually in a coma, and the missions end up helping you figure out the motivation of Jericho's plot so that when you finally awake, you are able to have a final non-shifting car chase to take him out.

I had figured out the coma thing early enough that I thought it was just a stupid vehicle for cost savings of keeping you in the vehicle, but tying it into piecing together Jericho's plot was a bit of brilliance.

Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor

 Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor, simply put - is a fantastic game and it looks beautiful on XBone.

The gameplay elements are very similar to Assassin's Creed or Batman Arkham in the open world.- but perhaps over simplified, there were few hiding places so orcs didn't pursue relentlessly and oftentimes gave up after you were out of sight.

Where this game turns into 110% win is with what they termed the "Nemesis System".  Orc captains are given additional skill effects and resistances, and are much more difficult to kill as they are oftentimes escorted or immune to abilities or quick to heal.  If any orc in Sauron's army kills you, even a grunt - they are promoted and given more of these skill effects, creating a virtually unique set of adversaries per game.

Additionally, there is a great deal of fight memory - as you fight a captain, he will remember and taunt you ".. you gonna run away again?"  In my game, I had one poor guy I threw into a fire - I thought I had killed him, but apparently he survived and repeatedly would come back more and more damaged until he only had a sack on his head as 'Soandso the disfigured'.

The game is great, but it is pretty one dimensional and extremely repetitive - you must like fighting orcs.  There is a story backdrop - and beautiful cut-scenes, but nothing more compelling than revenge.  Like Assassin's Creed, I bet the next game using the Nemesis system will be amazing.

Where the game went wrong, IMHO - is when we started being able to dominate these orc captains.  The process was oftentimes even easier than killing your foe, and since there are no limits to how many you can control - eventually I dominated myself out of all my adversaries.  Having this particular gameplay mechanic forced the player to be "super powered" by some other entity, and corrupted a potentially epic long-running story into an episode to be resolved.

Reus

Reus is a god-game, you play as four giants that have the ability to manipulate the planet and encourage the planet to re-seed itself with people when you awaken.  You do this by terraforming to create biomes and providing food, gradually people move in and become your region-specific ambassador which unlocks further abilities.

The placement of the animals/food/minerals affects the neighboring resources, and the presence of these ambassadors allows for certain upgrades.  For example, blueberries can be transformed into either strawberries or apple trees depending on what you have upgraded - and placing them next to animals might increase the food production in the zone around them.  You are given missions that want you to encourage the growth of a certain amount of food/gold/technology in an area.

Interesting mechanics, that's like saying it has a "great personality" though.  The game is in a word - boring, it was all the pleasure of organizing your school folder.  If you are going to make a god-game, you need to allow the player to have a malevolent pathway as well, or some sort of conflict rather than mission achievements.  Sure, the giants were able to crush villages - but that was really just stripping the land to prepare for some other settlements.

The game could be vastly improved by adding a tyrant giant, maybe even computer controlled that you can battle against with your minions.  ... or prehaps having you play as one giant, trying to make your people the dominant species.

Will not play again ...

Hitman - Agent 47, Silent Assassin and Sniper Challenge

I've changed the rules after my painful Painkiller experience.  Now games where I bought the "full pack" only require a cursory examination provided I play the main game to completion.  With that, I went through and played a few hours of each of the other still pending Hitman games.

I love the Hitman series.  It's a game designed to be played over and over again in attempts to do things in that perfect "Groundhog Day" style.  Invariably first attempts end up being a shootout through guards as you learn other ways to interact with your surroundings and learn the patterns in the environment.


Hitman: Codename 47 is the origin story, in which Agent 47 learns about his origin - he is a clone created by the DNA combination of his first four targets.  This stayed unplayed in my "active" list for a long time, as much as I love the series, I couldn't get past the clunkiness of the interface.  

I next tried Hitman 2: Silent Assassin, whose plot revolves around the kidnapping of your friend and employer, Father Vittorio.  Agent 47 agrees to do a few missions for the Agency to enlist their assistance in tracking his friend.  The interface and controls were much better in this installment, but the story was pretty thin.  Both of these games felt like they belonged on a PS2 with their lack of shadows and angular geometry.
 

I was first under the assumption that this was just another in the line, but Hitman: Sniper Challenge was created in 2012 as a teaser single mission companion to Hitman: Absolution.  You do nothing but snipe from a locked position, but the scene is filled with other targets and potential for eliminating your targets in a variety of ways. It created an interesting game of "pick-up sticks" where you had to find the untended bodyguard leaning over a balcony or wait until he walks under a scaffold filled with wine casks to eliminate him.  Additionally the scene is filled with flair bits while you're scanning around that increase your score multipliers - like destroying all the evidence a stripper left behind, or garden gnomes.  Fun game - and with a fast reload that encourages you to try and complete all the challenges.

Painkiller: Hell & Damnation

At last I reach the end of my Painkiller journey.  The first in the series brought back some Doom style nostalgia, as did the second .. the third, fourth, fifth - and now the culmination of the series.  

Kudos to the marketing division that masked this turd.  I ended up buying and suffering practically the entire series in anticipation of seeing what they came up with in H&D -- which boils down to a new weapon effect of making mobs your minion fighters.

Invisible barriers abound, absurd monster spawnpoints, recycled weapons - but perhaps the biggest insult is that after playing through each of these games, I make it to the first boss and realize that it's the same boss you fight in the first game.  Yes, this is a remake with a new title and a (intentionally?) misleading description.

This license has been milked to the point they're just squeezing udder flesh.  Buying this game is like buying something from a spam marketing campaign, like I've justified some idiot marketing imp who is at this moment in eager anticipation of shoveling out the next game.  I feel dirty and manipulated.

Legend of Grimrock

Legend of Grimrock hearkens back to classic dungeon crawl Apple II games - consider it the spiritual descendant of Wizardry, or the dungeons of Ultima and Bards Tale.

You play as a party for 4 convicts thrown into a dungeon that will serve as either your tomb or trials for your absolution.  Since it's not turn based, you are able to get away with slight cheats you would not be able to otherwise.  One such strategy would be strafing around a 2x2 grid attacking and retreating before the creature strikes back.

Much of the game appears to be governed by Zelda-ish type puzzles; find the way to open a gate, locate the key, trigger pressure plates in a certain order, etc.  This is what stopped me playing after 5 hours, there were far too many instances where I was looking for the hidden buttons or trying to figure out what door opened up when I triggered a lever - if it were a roguelike, I would probably still be in the depths.

When resting on levels, you occasionally are visited by a voice that hints at a greater story - all I really got out of it for as much as I played was "find me at the bottom of this place".

There is a development kit as well, and you are able to create your own adventures and a sizeable fan base building them.  This could be a great toolkit to realize some of the classic D&D modules.