Thomp's Picks for 2013 and Beyond

The Preamble

---

All has been quiet on the Thomplog front for quite some time now, and for that I apologize. The Thomp has recently started working in the games industry with an awesome company here in the Seattle area. While I am thrilled to have the job, and am enjoying it a ton so far, my spare time has been severely reduced. I've been playing a smattering of games in the mean time, but none to completion, and none enough to write any meaningful critique of.

But all of that being said, 2013 has been an exciting year for gaming. We saw a plethora of AAA gems rush in at the end of the generation, as they typically do, as well as countless indie masterpieces. It has been, without a doubt, a year to remember, and has set us up for an amazing looking 2014. So without further ado, let's get to the picks...

The Picks

---

Pick of the Year

Bioshock Infinite

Let's not bother with this "save the best for last" nonsense. If you play one game from 2013, it should, without a doubt, be Bioshock Infinite. Superb characters, fantastic FPS gameplay, a story that will twist your brain into a knot, and a world that will keep you awestruck with every corner you turn. Don't question it, just play it. 

Runner Up

Tomb Raider

I know most people won't agree with me on this one, but when it comes down to it, I had more fun with Tomb Raider than any other game this year, outside of Bioshock Infinite. The eerie, dark atmosphere, the fantastic cinematic gameplay, everything shined about this game. I will undoubtedly be picking this up for another play through soon.

Honorable Mentions

The Last of Us

The stealth gameplay wasn't exactly my cup of tea, but there's no question that the character development and storytelling in The Last of Us broke new ground this year in the medium, and for that I want to give at least an honorable mention. It is a fine game, and a must play for anyone who wants a deeply moving storytelling experience.

Grand Theft Auto V

The controversial beast came back to us this year in it's fifth installment. While I didn't enjoy GTA V as much as some, it deserves a mention, as it definitely brought some new and exciting things to the franchise. And of course, blew people's socks off with how absurdly offensive it manages to be.

Indie Pick of the Year

Rogue Legacy

Created by the brothers Kenny and Teddy Lee, who make up Cellar Door Games, Rogue Legacy came out of nowhere for me. I came across it by word of mouth when it released, and was instantly addicted to the soul-crushingly difficult platforming fun. With a near perfect mixture of difficulty and progression, Rogue Legacy stole my heart this year. I can't recommend it enough to gamers far and wide.

Runner Up

Antichamber

Alexander Bruce sunk well over four years into this non-euclidean, first-person, mind fuck of a puzzle game, and it shows. Antichamber is incredibly well thought out, and it possibly one of the most difficult, mind bending puzzle games I've ever played.

Free to Play Pick of the Year

Path of Exile

Simply incredible. That's what comes to mind when I think about Path of Exile. It is mind blowing that this nearly perfect action RPG, that surpasses the likes of Diablo 3 and Torchlight with flying colors in my opinion, is somehow free to play. It has arguably, the most liberal and fair free to play policy ever introduced in a game, and there is so much community support from the developers that you have to wonder where the hell the money is coming from. I can't speak highly enough about this game, I've sunk so many hours into it this year, and I suggest any other ARPG fans out there to do the same.

Runner Up

Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft (Beta)

This is kind of cheating since this isn't even in open beta yet, but it's really that good. I've sunk countless hours into Blizzard's new F2P collectable card game, and I will sink countless more. Blizzard has hit the nail on the head once again with this one. Hard to tell how obtrusive the pay model will be yet, so time will tell in that regard, but so far, it's looking pretty damned good.

Worst of the Year Picks

Aliens: Colonial Marines

Not only did the marketing for Aliens: Colonial Marines flat out lie to consumers, showing "gameplay" that wasn't actually from the game, but the game was blatantly unfinished. Gearbox and all associated parties really let fans of the franchise (and of gaming in general) down with this release. Because of the shameless deception from the developers and publishers, and the overall disappointment as a result, Aliens: Colonial Marines is easily my pick for the worst game of the year.

Runner Up

Defiance

I was initially excited for Defiance, not only as a third person shooter MMO, but as a new bridge between mediums, tying in a game world with an ongoing television series and having both affect one another. Unfortunately, I was disappointed on both fronts. The game had a decent enough backbone, but lacked a usable UI and almost all the social features that are so key in an MMO. Pair this with the fact that there was literally no effect on the TV show, or vice versa, despite being told that would be the case, and we're left with a smoldering disappointment. It was a nice idea, but unfortunately there was zero follow through.

Most Anticipated Games of 2014

Let's end on a nice note, shall we? We are at the end of 2013, and man do we have a big year ahead of us in gaming. With a new generation of consoles upon us, and numerous Kickstarter projects slated to come to fruition, we have a lot to look forward to!

Destiny

Bungie's ambitious new sci-fi FPS MMO, Destiny, is officially slotted for 9/9/2014, and it has started to generate a lot of hype. Being a long time Bungie and Halo fan, Destiny is at the top of my list for upcoming games next year.

The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt

After playing through The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings earlier this year, and enjoying it more than any RPG I've ever played before, I am genuinely stoked for CD Projekt's new addition to the franchise. Last I heard, this was slated for a Q2 release in 2014... I'll be waiting with bated breath.

Star Citizen & Squadron 42

I kind of doubt that we'll be seeing Star Citizen released this year, but since it was originally slated for 2014 in its Kickstarter campaign, I'm putting it down anyway. I'm super excited to see what Chris Roberts and his team will accomplish, and can only hope that we'll get our hands on the beast that is Star Citizen and Squadron 42 in 2014.

Project Eternity/Pillars of Eternity

Obsidian's Kickstarted "Project Eternity" is scheduled to hit shelves in Winter 2014. Like Star Citizen, not sure how confident I am in this releasing on time, but I sure hope it does. Obsidian seldom disappoints, and the cRPG style they're employing with this game has my mouth watering. Keep your fingers crossed that we get our hands on Pillars of Eternity this year.

The Conclusion

---

Well, that's it folks, my picks for 2013 and beyond. I want to sincerely thank everyone who has decided to read over the past year, I'm forever grateful for you taking some time out of your day to hear my opinions on gaming. I've had a great time writing, I've learned a lot, and I'd like to think that I've improved a bit.

I'm not sure how active the Thomplog will be in 2014. As I mentioned in the preamble, I've recently started a job in the games industry, and we have a significant release coming up this year. I'm anticipating a lot of work, and not a lot of down time. That being said, I'll undoubtedly still be gaming, and if I get the chance to share some thoughts, I plan to do so, so keep an eye out just in case!

Happy Holidays and New Year to everyone! 2014 is gonna be a doozy!

Thomp out... [drops proverbial mic]

Review - BioShock Infinite

BioShock Infinite

Irrational Games

Unreal Engine 3

Windows, OS X, XBOX 360, PS3

FPS, RPG

March 26, 2013

The Preamble

We’ve been waiting (not so patiently) for this game since Irrational Games officially announced it back in August 2010. After numerous heartbreaking release day push-backs, the day has finally arrived that we can feast our eyes on the beautiful vision from Ken Levine that is BioShock Infinite.

In the line of System Shock and BioShock games, I’ve only played one, and that is the original BioShock. Ken Levine was involved with the development of the System Shock and the BioShock games are supposedly heavily influenced by these games. BioShock 2 wasn’t developed by Irrational so I was ultimately too skeptical to give it a go.

I absolutely adored BioShock; I would say it’s one of my favorite FPS/RPG games of all time and therefore I've had high hopes for BioShock Infinite since the moment I heard of its development. I'm pleased to announce that it does not dissapoint!

The Overview

BioShock Infinite is the third installment in the BioShock series. You play as Booker DeWitt, a former Pinkerton agent who is trying to find a young woman, Elizabeth, in a floating city called Columbia. Similar to Rapture (from BioShock), Columbia is a dystopia, rife with racism, jingoism, and xenophobia. As you make your way through the city to find Elizabeth, you unravel the mystery of how the city came to be, what the ultimate plan of the main antagonist and leader of Columbia, Father Zachary Hale Comstock is up to, and ultimately, how you fit into the puzzle.

Like the original BioShock, BioShock Infinite focuses strongly on story and world building while keeping solid first person shooter based gameplay mechanics with a nice mix of RPG elements.

The Good

• The world is incredibly rich, with loads of detail and polish. You can tell that the extra time we waited for this game was put to good use. Massive set pieces, building exteriors, building interiors, skylines, sound, color palette; all of these work together perfectly to deliver a living, breathing world to your eyeballs and ear holes.
  
  
  

  

  
  
• One of the most creative and original storys I’ve seen in a video game. The original Bioshock stood out for it’s unique, creepy, and immersive story and Infinite does a great job of carrying the torch. There are tons of audio logs to find that illuminate the world and characters beyond the main storyline, in addition to random easter eggs throughout the game that are truly magical to discover.
  

  
  

  

  
  
• Characters that you care about. Booker, Elizabeth, Comstock, the Luteces; everyone is wonderfully voiced and written. You start out knowing nothing about Booker and his back-story, and throughout the game grow to really relate to him and understand him. Elizabeth has a great progression throughout the game, and the co-op interaction you have with her is nothing but positive.
  
  
  

  

  
  
• Enemies are incredibly creative and badass. This was much the case in BioShock as well, but Infinite is even better. The Handymen and Motorized Patriots, in particular, have great character models and are extremely intense to fight.
  
  
  

  

  
  
• It’s rare for games with a strong story to also have great gameplay mechanics, but Infinite pulls it off. With the addition of roller-coaster-like skylines to hop around, and “tears” that can be opened to bring in interactive items via Elizabeth, Infinite is far from being a cookie cutter FPS experience.
  

  
  

  

  
  
• Like the first BioShock, Infinite melds a number of RPG elements into it’s shooter mechanics. There are a variety of guns to play with, and if you thoroughly explore each area, there's a ton of gear that you can find to give you perks in various areas of combat and maneuverability. Vigors (the new Plasmids) can also be upgraded to give enhanced effects. These elements give the player a significant choice in how they play the game as well as provide a nice degree of replayability.
  
  
  

  

  
  
• While I haven’t tried 1999 mode, Infinite still provides a significant challenge in Hard mode. I’m not a huge fan of the ‘checkpoint’ system (see below), but the no-quicksave makes for a more intense, and ultimately more challenging experience.

The Bad

• Checkpoints vs. Save anywhere. It makes sense for some games, and while they made it fit pretty well in BioShock Infinite, I still would have much preferred a ‘save anywhere’ system, like in the original BioShock.
• While there is exploration in the game, it still feels sort of linear. This is coming from someone who's been obsessed with open world games lately, but I couldn’t help but feel a bit confined while playing Infinite.
  
  

The Verdict

If you enjoy video games as an entertainment medium, and are interested in seeing a divine example of how video games can be art, as well as entertainment, this is maybe the best game you could choose to play. I can’t recommend this enough!

The Extras

This is very early in the game, so don't worry about spoilers. This is just the first 6 minutes of my time in Columbia. You can tell I was in awe when I first started looking around... (sorry for the shabby sound, I'm working on it)

Thomplog Retrospective - Week of 4/8/13

The Preamble

Welcome to the first of many Thomplog Retrospectives! The purpose of these posts is to give me a chance to tell you what I’ve been playing on a week to week basis (because I know you are dying to find out). Many of the games I like to play are too long to finish in a week (at least when working full time), so rather than go on with month long review droughts, I thought I’d give a weekly update on what I’ve been playing, and current thoughts on the games.

My general approach to reviews is to not start writing them until I’ve completed the game, so this kind of thing will be nice for games that can’t be “beaten” in the traditional sense (i.e. MMO, Multiplayer, etc), and also for games that are beatable, but I likely won’t officially “beat” them (i.e. Racing, Simulators, ARPG, etc).

The tl;dr of it is, this is a facade for allowing me to ramble and share my experiences with games some more. Hopefully you’ll enjoy these extra (questionably relevant) nuggets of gaming goodness.

Defiance

I spend most of my weekday evenings gaming, and last week, that time was almost entirely spent with Defiance. You can read my first impressions of the game here, if you haven’t checked them out yet.

Since I posted my first impressions, I’ve sunk close to 20 more hours into the game. In this time I’ve been leveling up (or EGO’ing up, in Defiance terms), getting a better feel for the game, and exploring more of what it has to offer.

I spent a good deal of time running co-op missions, which are about 20 minute long, instanced events that you play through with 3 other people. There are bosses at the end that pose a significant challenge and upon defeat, drop some nice goodies for the group. These are fun, and it’s nice that Trion implemented the “queue” for this out of the box so you can find a group quickly (especially since chatting in-game is impossible).

I also sampled the PvP scene, trying out the Deathmatch mode. I only played a few matches, so it’s hard for me to judge too much, but my cursory conclusion is that the matches net you a ton of XP (even when you lose), but you’ve really got to be on top of your game as far as skill and weapon choices go. Also, lag sucks...

As I mentioned in my post last week, I’ll likely do a Defiance Part 2 post outlining my experiences with co-op and PvP in more detail, as well as the effect of the TV show (which premieres tonight!) on the game and vice versa.

Far Cry 3

I dove into this game right after I finished BioShock Infinite and immediately loved it. Far Cry 3 provides a bright, beautiful island to play around on, along with a surprisingly compelling main story line. I don’t know how long that sentiment will hold, but for now, it’s been keeping me going.

You come across many beautiful sights throughout the island.

I’ve put about 21 hours into Far Cry 3 so far and I think I’m about halfway through the story line. The time might sound inflated and that’s because I started out doing every single side quest and collectable. I stopped doing that this weekend, as this is a very time consuming thing to do, and honestly, gets old after a while. In Defiance, there are a similar number of extra things to take part in (side quests, challenges, dynamic content) but there’s a more measurable reward for your time (XP, currency, gear), where in FC3, there’s barely any incentive aside from the fun of actually carrying out these tasks. I don’t want to discount that fun either, because it is fun, but it’s fun that I feel like I can go revisit any time. With that, I’ve decided to go full throttle on the main story missions in the game, and leave the side stuff for a later date... or maybe even never.

Long story short, I’m enjoying Far Cry 3 a lot so far but there’s an immense amount to do. I’m going to focus on the main story line now, and hopefully get a review out to you within the next week or two.  

Torchlight 2

I ended up booting TL2 back up this weekend for an hour or two. Recent interest from my roommate and the new support from Steam Workshop is what compelled me to do such a thing.

Torchlight always benefited a lot from the modding scene, and it appears TL2 is no different. Steam Workshop wasn’t super populated with stuff yet, but I did check out a sizable mod called Synergies Mod which adds a TON of stuff, including respec potions, fully functional Necromancer class, and two nearly finished classes: Paladin and Warlock, just to mention a few. I think I will be diving back into this game once I finish up some of the other stuff I’ve been playing.

The Necromancer class in action. Did I mention they upped the difficulty?
This is one  of the first encounters I ran into at Level 3...

SynergiesMOD

Steam Workshop

Chains

Basically, since the Humble Bundle group released their first uber successful bundle of indie games with the ‘pay what you want’ model, there have been a plethora of bundle sites that have popped up, all with amazing deals. I, for one, have a terrible time resisting the urge to pick these up. A dozen games for $5? SOLD! So now I have hundreds of these indie games, most of which I’ve never even touched.

I’m attempting to at least try out one of these games every week to evaluate if it’s something I want to sink more time into. This week, I chose Chains.

The gist of the game is that you link together bubbles together by their color... and that's really about it. It sounds simple, but mixing physics and speed tests into the mix can make for some very tough challenges. I don't want to talk too much about it because I've only played 5 levels or so, but at the very least, here’s a video of one of the early puzzles (this level made me realize that this game is going to kick my ass).

When I first started I was pretty skeptical, but with each new level, it revealed new and interesting challenges. I'm not confident I'll be able to beat it as it seems to have a fairly steep learning curve (I had to retry the above level from the video at least 10 times before beating it), but I think this will be one I stick with, at least to the point of being able to give it a real review.

Stay tuned for more info on this one.

Check out the BundleStars Catnip Bundle to get your hands on Chains now!

Fire Emblem: Awakening

I started this back in March on my way to PAX East and have been slowly making my way through it. My save file says I’ve logged 15 hours, but I think it’s probably been more like 20 or 25. For those who aren't familiar with Fire Emblem games, they're tactical turn based strategy RPGs. Sort of like the most recent XCOM, but with ridiculous anime characters, and its own set of kooky rules and quirks.

I decided initially to go with the permadeath mode of the game. Meaning, if any of your squad dies during a battle, they are gone forever (in regular mode, they revive at the end of the fight). There’s one way around this, and that is to shut off your 3DS, and retry the battle from the beginning.

Seeing as this is my first Fire Emblem experience, this was tearing me up at the beginning as I was figuring out combat strategies and how to play the game in general. I was shutting down my 3DS left and right, retrying missions 4 or 5 times before completing it without losing my most vital characters.

At any rate, I finally got the hang of it, and am now in a position where my squad of Shepherds are unstoppable. I’m now enjoying this game a ton and consistently look forward to playing it, which I normally do before I go to bed.

I’m looking forward to writing a review for this one, and it will likely come alongside the Far Cry 3 review in the next couple of weeks, though it may not be until later (15 hours in, I’m not even halfway through yet, you can do the math).

Pending

I finished BioShock Infinite 4 days after it released and I still haven’t posted a review yet. I’m working on it! The review has been in progress for a long time now, but for some reason I have not felt compelled to work on it. I think it’s partly because of the massive amount of hype the game has gotten since it came out. You know what my review is going to say... The game is amazing. It’s not hard to figure that out. Surprises aside, I plan to post that review for you this week sometime.

Lastly, the PAX East 2013 Day 3 post! I’ve been a little slow on getting these out (there’s too much gaming to do!) but the wait will finally come to an end this week. I will post Day 3 this week, I promise!

To whet your palette for the BioShock Infinite review...