Death Bat's Top 5 Computer Games of 2017

Here it is! As the year come to a close, once again we review the year. I didn't get as much game time in this year as I'd have liked, but still somehow managed to squeeze some good ones in. So without further delay....

5. Game We Love to Hate to Love: Star Wars Battlefront II

Despite the negative press due to the ridiculous Loot Box issue spurred on by EA's bottomless pit of greed, Battlefront II remains a fun game to play and has a fantastic single player campaign. It contains split-screen co-op and competitive as well, which means my son and I can have fun together. It's the best Star Wars video game experience you can get right now. Despite the loot box controversy. Just....don't buy the loot boxes, m'kay? They turned that option off for now, but the consensus is that EA will retool it and turn it back on as soon as they think no one is looking.

Runner Up: Call of Duty WWII. Impressive multiplayer and a painful single player experience!

4. Best MMORPG Expansion: Morrowind for The Elder Scrolls Online

This robust entry into the DLC content for TESO was well worth exploring and added many hours of additional story-based content to what is arguably the only significant remaining innovative MMORPG on the market right now, in a market that is growing cobwebs otherwise.

Runner Up: Ummmm. Yeah.....I haven't bought any other new expansions for any MMOs this year.

3. Best new RPG+++: NIER: Automata

Look, Nier: Automata is a lot more than just an RPG, and it's also a lot more than just a JRPG. If you are a traditional RPG gamer with poor motor control skills this game is going to suck in many ways, but if you want to see how an RPG can genre-bend into a pretzel and remain a powerful RPG at the same time, then you really need to try N:A out. It's worth the experience, trust me.

Runner Up: Star Ocean: Faithlessness and Integrity, which actually came out in 2016 but I only just discovered it so....yeah. But a ton of fun!

2. Best new Shooter: Destiny 2

I loved the first Destiny and am very much enjoying the continuing story and evolving world of Destiny 2. I don't know if I can talk much about this game as a multiplayer experience, since I approach Destiny 2 like a single-player story-driven shooter experience, but if you play it that way then the game will be amazing....and anything else will just be a happy side perk.

Runner Up: Prey, which was also well worth getting for those who prefer single-player story driven experiences.

1. Best Adventure Game and Overall Game of the Year: Horizon: Zero Dawn

Alas this is only available on the PS4, but it's a good enough reason to actually buy a PS4 if you don't have one. Horizon: Zero Dawn is a better post-apocalyptic experience than you will find in just about any other RPG, as well as providing a distinct blend of open-world and story driven experience that does not get tiring with repetition and manages to impart a sense of urgency even as it tickles your need to explore in random directions. Best game I have played this year, hands down. A new expansion (The Frozen Wilds) recently released as well, and I have much more to play in this game.

Runner Up: Ghost Recon: Wildlands. This game has kept me playing in the post-apocalyptic wilds of Bolivia for months now and while it can get repetitive at times, the game does play best when you pay attention and strive for perfection.

Death Bat's Top Five Video Games for 2014

for 2014 we had lots of new video games, including a revival of isometric RPGs, an uptick in the "survival horror" subgenre that includes "little or no way to survive and fight back" as an important component, a flood of incomplete Early Access titles on Steam that are all simply amazing if you are good at using your imagination to pretend like the games are anywhere near completion, and the usual AAA console releases which invariably do something that give the necessary wedge for the press and gaming crowd to call for their heads (looking at you, Ubisoft).

But this is a list of the five games I enjoyed the most in 2014, and which also more or less came out this year. It is my list, and it's what most impressed me:

#5. Marvel Heroes 2015 (PC)
Discovering this literally days before the end of the year, Marvel Heroes moved from a "game I have deliberately avoided due to the premise not sounding like a good idea" to a game I have to play every night, as often as I can. It's Diablo, in the Marvel Universe....and it works. My wife is hooked now too.

#4. The Elder Scrolls Online (PC)
Will it go F2P? Who knows. Is it the best MMORPG out there? YMMV vary but for me it very much is. The game manages to take the MMO framework and drape the interesting story elements and a facade of the Elder Scrolls feel on to what could have otherwise been just another fantasy MMO. We have too many of these, but TESO proved to be the one that let me comfortably delete all the rest. Except Guild Wars 2, I swear I'll figure that one out some day.

#3. The Last of Us Remastered (PS4)
The PS3 remastering on the PS4 of what is easily the best survival horror zombie game out there. Coupled with Naughty Dog's ability to tell a story and gameplay that manages to emphasize the survival and storytelling, this is the sort of game I love.

#2. Shadow Returns and Dragonfall (Android)
Wha....and isometric top-down turn-based RPG on my list??? I have to include these. The versions I've thrown myself into are on Android, and the comfort of these games with a tablet touch screen is an excellent experience (but get a larger screen or you'll never read the text). Of all the recent isometric RPGs to resurface or appear in definitive revised forms, these two new entries deserve the most accolades, I feel, both for the smooth gameplay and comfortable experience. Plus, both of these titles have prompted me to sit up and take notice of Shadowrun 5th edition.

#1. Destiny (PS4)
Gabe from Penny Arcade expresses his love of Destiny as well as I could and hits all the important points. This is a game with an almost eerie mythic poetry of violence, mystery, haunting exploration and then more violence. For those who have been engulfed by this game such as myself Destiny is almost a sort of cathartic event, and much like Marvel Heroes and TESO I find myself needing to get a session in as often as I can (I tend to rotate between these three games right now, but Destiny almost always gets at least one mission in each evening). Who knew a shooter could feel so good and be simultaneously so relaxing and so exciting? I want Destiny to grow into something big.

Honorable Mention: I have three of them, actually:

Dragon Age: Inquisition (PS4) - I have been so busy playing other stuff that DA:I hasn't properly been given a chance to grab me. I can see it, I can tell its what I want, but it hasn't captured my focus yet. Not sure why, I expect it will in 2015. Could possibly tie into my general burnout on fantasy as a genre, maybe? That doesn't explain my TESO obsession, though.

Sunset Overdrive (XB1) - this game is amazingly fun in a Saint's Row meets landscape grinding sort of way. It has immense potential, and is eminently playable. SO 2 will be the one that really pushes it in newer directions, I suspect. It's a good for Xbox One to have this as an exclusive.

Halo Master Chief Collection (XB1) - hardly worthy of a 2014 game of the year notice even for a simple not-for-profit private blog, but worth mentioning because it's keeping more than a decade of amazing gaming alive and reinvigorating Master Chief's tale for the current generation, while adding tons of additional (free) content (Spartan Ops went live recently, and word is ODST will be a free add-on soon too).

The Elder Scrolls Online - Sinking its claws in deep after a second chance

So I've bounded back and forth a bit on Elder Scrolls Online.

First I decided pre-release that I wasn't going to get into it at all. Then I watched my wife playing in beta and decided it looked like it might be worth investigating, so I bought a copy on some credit a few weeks after release.

What I discovered initially was a lot of fun....and it felt very "Elder Scrolls" to me, having that "thing" that I can only define as what Bethesda --or in this case Zenimax-- can do to make an RPG fun.

Then I started to run into some problems. The first problem was ridiculously long load times. When a game takes 8 minutes from clicking on the shortcut to actually playing, and you only have 30 minutes to play that's a clear sign you need to play another game.

Then I would get in and find horrendous lag was leading to death constantly. Also, I was literally doing it wrong, I figured out later. I'd get in to TESO and forget this is a twitchy combat game, not one where you stand there trading blows.

I decided not to renew my sub at the end, but a few days later I recanted on this decision and decided instead to go back and try it another month. This was actually spurred on at least partially by my adoption of Wildstar, which had an open beta I could jump into. Wildstar is an interesting game and I think I will enjoy playing it, but in the course of messing around in the beta I realized that Wildstar had a lot of "MMOisms" that were actually styles of play I had really burned out on. Static storytelling....bubble balloon dialogue, cartoony WoWish graphics (I knew that in advance, it was not a selling point for me, but the look is actually very stylish and interesting), and a combat system that is a bit different but still much closer to its WoW DNA than...say....Elder Scrolls.

So after a bit of Wildstar I realized that I really ought to go give TESO a second chance. I did so, jumped back in, found some patches that seemed to dramatically improve lag issues (haven't had any lag problems in the last week of playing) and have been having a great time simultaneously leveling up three different characters. Hey, I also discovered that TESO lets you skip the intro sequence once you've done it. This has the unique effect of making TESO feel just like any other Elder Scrolls game where you're just another wanton criminal given an accidental reprieve.

At this point I've decided that for the foreseeable future I'm going to focus on TESO and will also give Wildstar a earnest chance. I'll continue to let Defiance and Guild Wars 2 linger as games I play when the mood strikes (and while it doesn't strike often I enjoy both a great deal when time and interest permit). I've deleted WoW and Rift completely now: I tried to level up in WoW in preparation for the next expansion, but I just can't muster the energy to care anymore. WoW, for me, is a fond memory of a great game from the old days, and the desire to stick with it is just gone. And as for Rift....I'll never reach level cap, and I don't quite know what went wrong with their 51-60 content that it's such a slog to get through, but I will always remember it fondly from the days before it went F2P. As F2P goes Rift is top notch, yes; but there are a lot things that become less important or even counter-productive to the design of a F2P MMO over a pay-to-play version. F2P for example benefits from slower advancement, and markets potions and perks you purchase to speed up experience gain; the older subscription model actively encouraged the designers to come up with bonus experience events for a contrast. The best time to play Rift was the eight weeks leading up to Storm Legion's release, when all sorts of craziness was going on and world events were popping everywhere that were designed to dump metric tons of XP on participants. The post F2P Rift is a painful slog that, if played the way it wants you to, will cost you more than $15 a month in purchases to stay relevant, and as always that means that the only people who benefit from F2P models are those who have no money at all but tons of time, or those with no time but tons of money (and no common sense).

Anyway....its now TESO and Wildstar for me until one or both go F2P!

The Elder Scrolls Online: Sitting in Troubletown?

If Elder Scrolls Online is going to have a hope and a prayer they need to get the following problems fixed:

1. periodic 6-8 minute loading screen wait periods need to stop. I can be playing WoW, Rift or GW2 in 30 seconds, but I'm lucky if I make it into TESO in 6 minutes.

2. The lag has got to go. The server instability has got to go. When 2 out of 3 times I try to log in and play but can't, or find that I get kicked and the server seems to have croaked....bad sign, Bethesda! I want to play your game, please let me?

3. This is more a pet peeve than anything, but lets get a little more color in the palette, for a change. The colorful environments of other MMOs stick out in sharp contrast to the perpetual drabness that is TESO. This could also be a side effect of being a spin-off of the decidedly prettier looking Skyrim, but bottom line is it needs something....some color, better modeling/textures...something.

4. This is more of a personal deal, but I do get worried that if I play TESO to the end all I'll encounter is an endless schedule of PvP focused content. I get nervous with any game that supports a ruling "king" of PvP and did not discover this was a big component of TESO until recently. Nothing wrong with PvP....but not really what I wanted out of an Elder Scrolls game, y'know?

As an aside, if PvP is a big component of the game, I can only imagine just how ticked off the PvPers must be with the sort of lag this game exhibits. Death by lag in PvE is infuriating enough....dying due to lag in PvP is dangerous for your blood pressure!

Other than that I do love this game, if only it would work right. But the technical issues are so bad I am thinking I'll cancel my sub before the free time is up next week and wait a couple months to see if they iron out their problems. Way back in the day I did something similar with Rift, which was technically flawed but interesting at the start....I came back a year later and it ended up being my main game for a good two years. With TESO, though, if I give it a year...odds are when I come back it'll be F2P anyway, I suspect....

The Elder Scrolls Online - I don't know why I ever doubted you, Bethesda

Maybe the whole Zenimax Studios thing made me nervous (but seeing my wife in the beta suggests otherwise)...maybe I've been on hiatus from MMORPGs long enough to have gotten away from the doldrums of playing this style of game (that's not it)...all I know is I had planned not to delve into The Elder Scrolls Online for a while, maybe wait until it went F2P or something (despite my dislike of the F2P model). Today I picked up a copy on a lark, and the desperate need for sleep is the only reason I pulled myself away long enough to make this comment and hit the sack.

Bottom Line first night review: it's got all the best stuff I like from a Bethesda RPG, wrapped up in an MMO veneer; I've been playing for several hours now, and it really feels like a Bethesda RPG. It's refreshingly good, and I am deleting all my other MMOs now on the PC except for Final Fantasy XIV (because I still have two more months on my sub there). I don't know why I would play any other MMO now that TESO is out.