I have had a small obsession recently with a game called Warfare on the Xbox. It is a free to play PC/Xbox/PS4 game that came out about six months ago. I picked it up initially and played it for a few weeks and then put it down. It came out on the consoles right around the same time as Destiny and it a lot of ways it is the same sort of game as Destiny, except that it is third person to Destiny's first person. It is a loot based, quasi-MMO. You play as a Tenno, a being of some sort that can inhabit bodies call war frames. The story is pretty thin, but the gameplay is quite fun and I honestly think it does right what Destiny was trying to do.

It is a loot grind, which means you will be playing the same missions over and over, but it does succeed in providing you all those juicy item drops that and loot based game does. Recent updates have made the game much more playable on the consoles with a controller and I have found it is one of the few games on the new Xbox that consistently has people chatting in it. 

There is something done right about this nice, mindless online component to Warfare. It is almost all cooperative so if you are the type of person who doesn't enjoy or isn't good at online competitive play, then you can still get into the community here and enjoy your time online. The pacing is just right with the loot you get where you can still keep progressing forward and building more gear for your Tenno. 

What surprised me the mot though is how well the developer has done the FTP aspect. You can earn almost everything in the game without paying a single dollar. The purchase platinum in the game basically gives you really cool cosmetic upgrades and also allows you access to what they call "Prime" versions of war frames and gear. So, I'll admit that I gave the developer $20 and picked out some Platinum to get some cool additional gear. 

I don't normally play games on my iPad or iPhone beyond something simple to pass the time while waiting in line. I have always preferred to play games on dedicated gaming devices. Over the Christmas holiday though I downloaded SimCity BuildIt for my iPad. I also made the mistake of introducing my wife to this game. 

SimCity was one of those games that always stuck with me when I was a kid. SimCity 2000 in particular was this perfect mix of resource management and expenditure. The new game, Buildit, which is available on the iPad, takes a lot of its ques from last year's maligned SimCity for the PC. Where that game seemed to fail with gamers the model seems to hit really well on the iPad. Perhaps it is because of the F2P model or the sort of stripped back interface, but this game (which is free) pretty much hits the nail on the head IMO. It nails all of the resource management of the previous games and has the model fit surprisingly well for the sort of "Farmville" model of resource distribution. 

In the original Simcity games your resource restrictions were largely constrained by your tax income. Here that resource constraint is spread out among different building materials. Yes, these have a time factor put onto them, but when you look back at the older games, they really aren't that different from the original concept. Back on those old PC games you were sitting, waiting, gnawing at your fingers waiting for that next chunk of money to come in. The satisfaction and anticipation is all there in this game and I am surprised to say that EA has handled the P2P aspect rather well. I haven't felt the need to buy anything to further my city, which in some ways is too bad. I personally have no qualms about putting in a few dollars to support games I like, but I wish I could put in some money into something besides getting in game cash to speed up builds. Something like a unique tile set of high end buildings would be totally reasonable for me. 

One thing that has really surprised me though is the level of detail going on. Most recently I had to build a hospital for my city and I had several abandoned buildings because of it. After I built the hospital, small ambulances drove out from that hospital and then went to my abandoned buildings. Upon returning to the hospital those buildings began to fill up with people again and my population rose. That was a surprising detail that I thought was really well crafted. I had another similar instance once when I had a building that didn't have garbage service, so you could see bags of garbage being thrown out of the windows into a pile on the side of the building with seagulls circling overhead. 

A surprisingly well crafted game for what it is. 

Video games, video games, video games. 

Fall and early winter is that time of year when all of the blockbuster games come out. There have been some decent games that have come out this fall, but I feel that 2014 overall has been a bit of a lackluster year for gaming. I definitely have played less games this past year, and I am not entirely sure if it is due to the selection of games out or if it has to do with my available time. 

I put a lot of time in at the end of the summer and through the early part of this fall playing Pikmin 3. That game is quite good, but it had one of the most frustrating ending levels I have ever played in any game. I seriously almost did not make it through that game simply due to the ending. 

Just prior to Thanksgiving I also took advantage of a sale over at target and picked up three games; Sunset Overdrive, Shadow of Morodr and Bayonetta 2. 

I had a lot of fun playing Sunset Overdrive. It was a great looking game that had that goofy, over the top mayhem that is reminiscent of the first Crackdown. I beat the single player mode, but I hope to put in a little bit more time playing the multiplayer and getting all of the collectibles. There is a good, mindless sort of fun about the game that really hits well. 

I also started playing Bayonetta 2 over the past couple of weeks. I enjoyed the first game, but this second one really nails the over the top Japanese aesthetic and action along with overt sexuality, subtle and not so subtle puns and crazy fight sequences. The game is fast, smooth and really does look quite gorgeous. For anyone who thinks the Wii U doesn't have games, they really need to look at the releases for 2014 that Nintendo has put out. It really is a stellar system right now. 

Finally I started playing Shadow of Mordor just a couple of weeks ago. That game is straight up an Assassin's Creed clone, right down to the map. I have only put in a few hours so far, but I can't say I am hooked. People online seem to really love this game and many have it as their game of the year. The nemesis system, with the orcs is cool, but the game has not captured me. The opening couple of hours are difficult since the tutorials are almost non-existent. What little information it does put across the screen for you disappears too quickly. The text in the game is also incredibly small and if you are sitting any more than four feet from your TV you simply cannot read it. 

I hear it gets better and I am planning on still playing it. I sort of found myself this weekend though falling back into a game that has to be my game of the year if simply for the hours I have put into it. Titanfall. 

I have played over eighty hours of that game since its release last March. A took a break for a few months as if burned itself out, but Microsoft had it on sale for $12 over the Thanksgiving holiday. I booted it up again this weekend and it is as fun as ever. I am probably going to see myself playing that for another few weeks over the holiday break as well. 

I haven't been playing my Wii U much lately. I have been trying my hardest to try and get some time into Monster Hunter 3: Ultimate on the console. I have spent the better part of the past month though just getting frustrated with that game. I wanted to try and like it. I was in the mood for something very "Japanese feeling", but I just couldn't get myself to like it. I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing most of the time and I unfortunately found most of the combat pretty boring. 

My lack of interest in that game had me not really wanting to pickup the Wii U for a while. I finally had to give in and I am thankful I did. I should have thrown the towel in on that game weeks ago and I opened up Pikmin 3 that I downloaded with the purchase of Mario Kart 8. Now Pikmin is quite a good game. It is what I would call the perfect "laid back" experience that Nintendo does so well. The game is calming with very subtle music and design elements.  Tension in the game is mostly low and the payoff really comes from wandering around the world looking for fruit for your ship. 

It has also been the best game to utilize the Wii U's gamepad so far. Not only does it make good use of the map functinality, but the Wii U's pad acts as a communicator device which pays off really well. It is definitely worth the pickup. 

This spring so far has been a pretty fun time for video games. It has been my sort of go to stress relief after I come home from work. I have been playing quite a bit of Titanfall since its launch back in March. The game is basically just Call of Duty, but the formula still works and it remains fun to jump in and play and hour or two. There has been quite a bit of complaints from some people online about the value of the game for online only. I never quite understood the issues with those arguments. People spend $60 on COD all the time without touching the single player at all. A new map pack is coming out in a couple of weeks that I am looking forward to play. 

I also picked up Super Mario 3D World a few weeks ago for the Wii. That is a gorgeous looking game and if anyone had an qualms about the Wii U producing some good looking games, just look to the Nintendo products for it. It is your standard Mario game in many respects and has all the fun you expect there. I have liked playing it in short bursts of 30-45 minutes, which seems to get me through 2-3 levels before I hit a road block. If you are trying to be a completionist and collect all the stars, the game can be quite challenging.  Mario Kart 8 is coming out at the end of this month and I am really looking forward to that. All of the video and screenshots that have been coming out so far make the game look quite phenomenal. 

I have also been slowing still chipping away at Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning on my Xbox 360. That is another really pretty game, and it fills my sort of mindless RPG niche at the moment. I wouldn't say that it is a great game by any stretch, but the fight mechanics are solid enough to keep me going and the world is just too pretty not to look at. I thing that drags the game down a bit for me is all of the sidequests, which all come across as a bit meaningless. They all feel like sidequests from an MMO and they are extremely numerous. Overall it is worth playing if anyone comes across it. 

So a few weeks ago, I posted about how i pulled out all of my old game systems and hooked them up to my TV. Since doing that I have done a little research on some of the great games that I missed from previous generations and also some of the really good Xbox Live Arcade games I missed from this past generation. I have to say that I am quite surprised at home many Gamecube games made it onto that list. I loved that system to death, but I sort of thought that I played most of the good games on it. 

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I am not sure if I posted this earlier, but back in November I decided to pickup a Wii U on a sort of whim. I figured now would be a good time to get one and the system had a new package deal out that had the Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD packed in. The Wind Waker Zelda is my favorite game of all time so it was pretty hard for me to actually pass up on it.

I also decided to get into Skylanders and bought a package of that game on sale over the holiday break. That game is incredibly well produced and truth be told, those little action figures are incredibly addictive to collect. I know that game is supposed to be for kids, but I can't help but have fun while playing it. This Penny Arcade Comic is not too far off from the truth of these things. 

After playing Skylanders and Zelda the past few weeks i have to say that they overall felt really refreshing. Both games are just really well made games and not just "kids" games. The overall atmosphere and feeling while playing them was completely different than most of the games that I found while playing on the Xbox. I didn't have any of the stress or tension around my gaming sessions that I normally had with other games. 

Case in point is the latest Tomb Raider game. I also started playing that game the past few weeks. That game in its own right is really well made and is probably my favorite game that was made this year, but the whole environment and atmosphere while playing it is obviously quite different than the Nintendo games I am playing on the Wii U. The game is gritty and intense. It is fun but also to a point stressful. I don't exactly feel relaxed while I play it and while i do enjoy the story and the game immensely it doesn't quite put a smile on my face like Skylanders does. 

So the past couple of weeks saw the advent of the next generation of gaming consoles. I went out and decided to buy a Wii U with the new Zelda Wind Waker HD remake. Ohh, I want one of the new consoles, but I cannot decide quite yet what to get. Anyways, I will get to that next week in another post. 

This week I am going to post though my favorite games of this last generation. These are in no particular order, but simply the games that left me with the best impression. 

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Another gaming update. So what have I been playing since I last posted in May? A good bit actually. 

Syndicate

Syndicate was a rather average cyberpunk FPS game. The graphics in the game were quite good for the Xbox, but the gameplay overall was pretty dull. Your basic run and gun shooting with a slow time mechanic that I often times forgot was even there. I was pretty disappointed overall since I really love cyberpunk on the whole. 

Shadows of the Dammed

Here is a game that I heard a lot of people talking about when it came out. It is supposed to have a lot of "B" movie charm to it. What it does have is a lot of teenage sexualized drama. I dunno what it is, but the whole over the top sexual thing with the Japanese really annoys me these days. It makes me think their society of men are just perpetually stuck in a sort of adolescent phase. Soap box aside, the overall game I am not really enjoying. The shooting mechanic has to be so precise to make a hit that I just find the game frustrating. I just don't have the time to mess around with perfecting perfect skill shots in a game in order to effectively progress my way through it. 

Overall the game just reeks of a bit too much Japanese game design in it in all the wrong ways for me. It is also of the horror genre, which has never really been an genre I have found interesting apart from the original Silent Hill. 

Overlord II

Overlord is one of my favorite games from this generation. The first game nailed the Pikmin clone while adding just enough of other elements to make it unique. Overlord II came around and it is basically just more of the same, all the way down to the training and origin story. It again, was rather disappointing since I would have liked to have seen more divergence from the first game. Still and OK game and the end boss this time around was a lot less frustrating (perhaps too easy). 

Saints Row: The Third

I normally hate open world sandbox games. Saints Row 2 and Crackdown really changed my mind this past generation and Saints Row: The Third was such a highly hyped game that I had to play it. I think it may have been a product of it being over hyped, but I felt the game was just "OK". It is certainly solid and still has one of the better shooting mechanics. It even had some really great moments with some songs, etc. Overall though I found myself bored, as I do with most sandbox games with doing the same actions over and over in the side missions. There is only so much driving and shooting one can do. 

Dishonored

Overall, here was an excellent stealth action game. A nice art style with good mechanics and interesting game play. I still felt a bit over-hyped for this game a bit, but it is definitely a world I would like to go back to. My only major gripe was the amount of backtracking and returning to the same levels.