#Rabbie Dungeon had a problem!

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Kristell looking absolutely sickening in the Mabinogi Mobile news update

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2016 In Review - Games

Wow did I not finish much. But here they are!

Ladykiller in a Bind - This here visual novel is probably game of the year for me. This would mean more in a year where I hadn’t failed to finish nearly everything I started, but still. It’s funny and dirty and drawn with skillful personality (for those who dislike dirty, there’s now a Christmas sweater mode, although I’m not sure how much that’s really going to help). What makes it especially memorable is the hard-dropped relationship insights and the neat-o conversation systems. I love that you can hold out for a better option, I love that you have to negotiate suspicion. Christine Love is a game designer I admire, but I’ve found her work a little heavy and strident in the past. This mingles a few difficult themes with a lighter touch and also jokes. And, y’know, sex. I enjoy the side stories more than the main romances, but good stuff all around. Just don’t expect a treatise on consent or anything as carefully lecture-like as Hate Story. It’s a sex comedy first.

Undertale - Maybe should be my game of the year, it’s something, it really is, this beautiful, surreal, unnerving little game with skeletons and cow-dudes and jokes, jokes!! But I am really bad at bullet hell and my frustration with the mechanics made it a very nearly miserable experience for me. Still worth it, though. When it goes all late-stage what-the-hell Earthbound, totally worth it.

Solstice - Another runner-up for game of the year. Moacube’s latest is beautiful and fascinating, a lovingly nuanced and complex murder mystery with a whole lot of character-driven philosophy stuff. It’s a little short and opaque, but every moment is wonderful.

Tyranny - Half of it threatens to be Obsidian’s most interesting game (and that’s saying something). The other half is tediously under-developed. The good stuff is wonderful, though. Your party may not have any quest lines to follow, but they, like most of the characters, are fascinatingly awful people, except when they’re not, and then it’s even sadder. The dialog ranges toward the rich, dense. I could’ve personally gone without the combat and just wandered around talking to people and hovering over the green footnotes. Next time, Obsidian, next time.

Baldur’s Gate Enhanced Edition - I finally dragged all the way through it. The high points are really high, as in Sarevok’s got some actual depths, Durlag’s Tower is a great dungeon, and it was terrific to pretend to be a cat while robbing that one guy. The rest of it is fine, but maybe I’ve played one too many games with real time with pause. I just couldn’t get into the combat, and if you’re story-moding your way through that, it is an awful large part of the game to be disengaged by.

Baldur’s Gate Siege of Dragonspear - The new expansion! There’s more line-by-line writing than in Baldur’s Gate and it really ain’t bad, but the story bothered me a lot from a thematic perspective (our opponents had perfectly good points and were needlessly villainized) and was railroaded in such an obvious way as to be frustrating. I don’t expect a lot of choice and consequence in a Baldur’s Gate, and the game as a whole was fine, but I wish the greater amount of text had done it more favors.

Pillars of Eternity - White March - Pillaaars. White March is neat. A little more polished than Tyranny, if not quite as compelling. The new companions were good (up golems, man) and the worldbuilding exquisite as always. I think a lot of folk didn’t get around to playing it, though, as I still have achievements on my showcase everyone should’ve gotten by now.

Witcher 3 - Heart of Stone - I think I finished it this year. I think! Neat expansion, more focused and interesting for my tastes than the bigger Blood and Wine (which I still haven’t finished). Terrific villain, a lot of great weirdness, the guy I was supposed to redeem (and I guess did) was a loser, though, and his wife needed a little more— something.

The Shivah - Early Wadjet Eye game. The first? Very short, but good. Depressed rabbi solves a murder. Includes conversational boss battles with rabbinical answers and some theology. One of those things where I don’t agree with the protagonist’s perspective (we don’t need to), but he’s presented with a lot of nuance and personality. 

It’s Spring Again - You can finish it in ten minutes and it’s only challenging if you’re two, but beautiful. Everything’s done up in dense patterns. Sun, tree, dirt. Snow is beautiful, fall is beautiful, it’s all beautiful.

12 Labours of Hercules - A click-click-click time management game with a tiny touch of opacity, but mostly just nice, colorful fun, not too taxing. Prettily designed. I enjoy that Hercules doesn’t do squat 90 percent of the time.

Sorcery, Part 1 and 2 - I had a hard time with these games, which is sad, because they seemed up my alley. They’re nifty, the writing is good, the art is charming, but some of the gamebookiness in 2 I found frustrating and arbitrary. Missing one piece early on was enough to make the game unfinishable at the very end, or near enough. I have 3 and 4 left to play, which everyone is very glowing about, but I’m hoping for less old school “guess what, you never looked in the right place at the right time and now you don’t have that telescope!!” Rewinding can only help so much.

OZMAFIA!! (one route) - I got so excited by the art and the premise, but this was just dire. Maybe dire’s too strong a word, maybe, but all I can remember of it is a staccato, confusing sense of time, thinly drawn characters and— that’s it. The big sin is that it’s dull.

Little Lily Princess (two routes) - The crime is I’ve only done two routes. Hanako’s work is always very solid, and this light yuri take on A Little Princess is immensely charming. My problems with it are the problems inherent in the source material, but the game manages to wring some legitimate pathos from these relationships without feeling quite too sweet.

Psycho Pass Mandatory Happiness (one route) - Man, I know I need to get more than one of at least a half-score of endings here, but I found this really disappointing. Can I really expect too much of the creator of Madoka? Can I? The premise (your ability to exist in society is predicated upon your ability to perform mental health) is killer, but, man, I just didn’t care about anyone. I know from personal experience that writing a purely thinky narrative risks turning all your characters into cyphers, and Psycho Pass suffers hugely from this. I’m not sure the pleasures of the thinky bits are worth it.

One Way Heroics (bad end) - Cute little harried-retro thing where you have to outrun the Nothing— well, the darkness, anyway. You outrun the darkness to kill the dark lord. I’ve finished, but I haven’t won. Premise prompts some lovely bleakness. If you do defeat the Dark Lord, is there even anything left to save, or has it all been devoured behind you?

Epistory - Typing Chronicles - You’re a cool gal who rides on a cooler fox. You, the player, get to type a lot for the sake of murdering murderous insects. It’s appealingly designed and fun, even if the story is a bit of a nothing. It’s a typing game, y’know?

Planetarian - the reverie of a little planet - Short little weeper from Key. A good test of whether you dig their style or not. I do, if not passionately. Post-apocalypse thing about dude rediscovering wonder after finding a still-functional robot in a planetarium. The star bits are pretty darn effective.

This Book is a Dungeon - Cool, if cludgy game book with some entertaining bad endings. It’s cludgy because it has no real save system and making a mistake means replaying, replaying, replaying.