Games Beaten in 2013 = 34
Games Beaten in 2014 = 30
1/31 Infamous: First Light (PS4)
2/23 Sepulchre (PC)
Games Beaten = 2
3/12 Life is Strange: Episode 1 - Chrysalis (XB1)
Life is Strange is an episodic, narrative game, very much in the style of the recent Telltale games. The art style is less comic book-y than the TT games though and I found it really striking. The story revolves around a young lady, Max, who has come back to her home town after being away awhile, to go to a private school with a good photography teacher. I think it is from a pre-college level, but I'm not entirely sure. Like the TT games, when you do certain narrative actions you will be told "this has consequences" or "he/she will remember this." Where this differs however is that the main character finds she has a special ability to rewind time. So something that you'd have to "save scum" to do in the TT games, they let you do as a mechanic. Didn't like that outcome? Re-do it. Re-did it and you liked the first way better? Do it again! The nice thing about this, is redoing sections is made easy with a few button presses and skipping over sections that are unchanged is a snap, making retrying sections something you'd actually do.
The voice acting is very good, but the dialogue writing is a little stilted at times. I'm not sure if that's a language barrier thing or gendered or what, but some of the things the girls say, just don't feel natural. In some spots I wonder if the VA wasn't like, "you want me to say what?" Maybe in subsequent episodes the VAs will feel more comfortable to call that stuff out. Overall though, I'm quite intrigued with where things are headed, several storylines have started and I'm interested in each of them and where it's headed.
3/17 Adventure (1978) (AVCS, Emulated)
Starting the A-Z, starting with year of birth, challenge. Seems like the year this came out is fuzzy, so I'm fudging and taking it for '78.
Adventure is, well, an adventure game. It feels like the beginnings of what that genre would come to mean. You have one inventory slot and lots of key+door and dragon+spear combinations to figure out. Controls are rudimentary, but I can't help admire with how you're eased into the game. There are 3 games and the first one is very easy, introducing to you the basics of how the game works. Run into items to pick them up, one item at a time colored keys open the same color castle, and most importantly how to finish the game (I'll leave that to the reader to figure out). Then when you start the second game, it introduces additional game concepts like a magnet and bridge and a bat that steals items. Great game, interesting to see ideas in the early years, like: a maze that you can only see the walls for around your guy. One parting thought: the bat is a right bastard. Onwards to B and 1979!
