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Your games of 2016: Good, OK, and bad

KoL

Expert FPS Player
Staff member
Moderator
Exactly what it says it is, except I actually played a lot of games this year so I'll just stick with one Pokemon game and one non-Pokemon game for each category.

The Good:

Honestly, this was the only game I've played that came out this year that I actually thought was very good, and I question whether it even counts since it's just an expansion pack. Whatever, Destiny: Rise of Iron was a good expansion that furthered the improvements made to the game by the Taken King expansion previous, and while some of the new content's quality was questionable and the game's arrival came with a fair few (harmless) glitches, the Wrath of the Machine raid more than made up for it. I think the best analogy for Destiny overall is that of an olympic runner who trips over the first hurdle, knocks down the next five and still manages to finish the race with a medal. Maybe not a gold medal, but silver and bronze are good too.

If I have to pick a good Pokemon game this year, for how well it was designed overall this has to go to Pokken Tournament. Character balance has been notoriously hard to achieve with many fighting games, but Pokken somehow managed to find a formula that works, as all the Pokemon bar a couple managed time to shine in EVO and Worlds this year. The only thing I'd change for Pokken is just to add more stuff to it, like Arcade, Time Attack or Survival for single-player and maybe some additional multiplayer modes or something, I don't know. If Pokken gets a re-release on the Switch, all I want is more of the same. Emphasis on "more," because the lacking content made Pokken almost just OK, but I can't deny what we did get was very well made.

The OK:

On the topic of MMO expansions that weren't quite as good, World of Warcraft: Legion. While it was definitely better than the awful Warlords of Draenor on the grounds that it actually ran, it still suffered the same issue as Warlords where levelling to 110 was great and all but once you reached maximum level your progress slowed to an unbearable, grindy crawl up to the raids thanks to Suramar being long and boring and dungeon grinding for loot also being long and boring. In short, Legion worked and was OK while it lasted, but that's all it really was: OK.

I had initially considered Pokemon: Sun and Moon to be in the Good category until I got to the end of the game and realized the Friend Safari and Super Training were gone and replaced with the vastly inferior chaining and Isle Evelup. While at least it's better than absolutely nothing like every generation prior to Gen VI provided, I feel there's enough difference between the two systems that both could have been included quite comfortably, and while it may seem pedantic to knock Sun/Moon down to OK just off of this, coming up with a great idea in one and then removing it for no reason in the next is so unbelievably stupid that it deserves it, but if you want more, then the Totem Battles all sucked (yes, ALL of them, for either being Long and Boring (TM) or long and extremely annoying) and the main game's pacing was very slow at times. At least the vastly improved characters and story made up for it though.

The Bad:

I was torn between two games for this one, and while Star Fox Zero almost ended up being the one, my issues with it were less with the game (which I felt did the best it could with what it had) and more with the absolutely dreadful console and controller it was saddled with, so Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 gets the spot instead for showing how shit Dimps are at making games. They tried to fix the problems Xenoverse 1 had (Super Saiyan ability spamming, clothing items affecting stats) by making it so daring to use an ability on an opponent who isn't stunned or letting you kill them is complete suicide since they can just stamina break you during it, left in the worst problems (VERY clunky controls, awful AI for your allies) and added a few more (abilities now being mostly junk, so punching people to death is now the best strategy.) In a game where collecting all the abilities is a key thing, making almost all the abilities unusable garbage is a really clever idea. At least the QQ Bang system lets you wear whatever outfit you want, so I guess they did one thing right. Overall, as a Dragon Ball game I guess it's the best you're getting. As just a game in general, Xenoverse 2 is complete shit just like the first game.

Worst game I've played all year and worst game I've played in a very long time: Pokemon Go. Barely playable on release, and then the patch that actually let you play the game somehow made it worse by glitching up the curveball and making Pokemon overall harder to capture in a game that revolves almost entirely on the RNG deciding it'll let you win. While it has (apparently) gotten better I can't imagine a scenario where it could have gotten worse, and it wasn't long before I got so sick of Go that I stopped playing long before even the nostalgia fans jumping on the bandwagon did. Combined with this game somehow being more grindy than Destiny and WoW as well as how utterly tedious it is compared to those two and you have a recipe for shit. Part of me questions if Go even counts as a game due to how empty it is overall, but then this is the generation that considers Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls to be games.

So, if you want to gush over your favourite games of this year, or rant about the ones that disappointed you or just plain made you hate life, then here is your place.
 
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Rinoa Heartilly

Mother of Meltans
My favourite games that were released this year (on Steam) would have to be the remake of Corpse Party, Final Fantasy IX, Rabi-Rabi and Princess Remedy in a Heap of Trouble. I've had such incredible fun playing them and would definitely play them again and again in future. I was rather iffy on buying FFIX for the computer since I heard some negative rumours surrounding it, but I bought it anyway and I'm so glad that I did. It's been a joy to experience one of the most highly favoured games in the Final Fantasy series. I could never find it in stores and now, I know why.

Layers of Fear and Wicce are okay. I would recommend them! Layers of Fear has some genuinely scary moments and the DLC is amazing. The graphics, music and overall general atmosphere is a masterpiece. I can't get enough of the story behind it. Now, Wicce has a stunning and unique take on it's graphics. There's no speech involved, the communication between characters is simplified for all to understand. The music is nifty too. It's been very fluid, no crashes and I love it to bits. It's pretty cheap too!

The games that really disappointed me were The Town of Light and A Wild Catgirl Appears!

The Town of Light is SO promising, I loved everything about it EXCEPT the camera motion. It makes me feel so sick and gives me a headache when I'm trying to progress through the game. It took away a lot of enjoyment from me. I felt like I would have to force myself through it, rather than simply have fun with the experience. It's a crying shame because it could have been one of my favourites of this year. As for A Wild Catgirl Appears!, it's poorly written. The artwork (it's a visual novel) is inconsistent and some of the achievements aren't even available (or granted) anymore due to fault with the developer. They know about the issues and have yet to deal with them. The game is incredibly short. I know a lot of visual novels are, but you look at Kindred Spirits on a Rooftop (which is worth every penny) and then THIS and it's like a giant middle finger to the buyer. It's very obvious that this is perhaps the developers first try at making a game. They've made the effort to change a few things up. I can see that they're trying to better the quality. So I live in hope that this goes from the worst to okay in future. (Still needs better writers though.)
 
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