#GOTY
#GOTY
The Games We Played is a year end round up of thoughts about games we spent time with.
By Omar (@siegarettes)
When Harmonix makes something, I pay attention. Their contributions to the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises creates a veneer of commercialization, especially after the former franchise over saturated the market, but look closely and you’ll find a constantly refined craft and passion for both music and games. (A bit perfect for our focus here at clickbliss). These are the people who brought both a new Dance Central title and the beat influenced shoot-em-up A City Sleeps to us this year.
In that context, who else would be better to bring us a 2014 update to Disney's Fantasia? Despite my reservations about how successful a Kinect based Disney game could be, I found it worth at least worth paying attention to with Harmonix at the helm. Besides, I needed something to justify my Kinect purchase aside from Child of Eden and yelling at my squadmates in Mass Effect.
Of course, what really drew me in was the tracklist. Leading with pop hits like Lady Gaga’s “Applause” and Lorde’s “Royals”, moving to well known classical pieces from the Fantasia movies, it then spin offs to Queen, Depeche Mode, Kimbra, and…Jimi Hendrix?
The Games We Played is a year end round up of thoughts about games we spent time with.
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RJ
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I swore to myself I would never touch a Pokémon game ever again since my experiences with Pokémon Y. It wasn’t a bad jRPG per say, but for once I felt that I was simply fatigued with the series that I hold dear to my heart. Then came Pokémon Omega Ruby.
By Omar (@siegarettes)
All screenshots taken using the in-game camera on the PS3 version.
There’s something hollow about Grand Theft Auto V. Upon reaching the story’s conclusion, I found myself left with a sense of dissatisfaction. Even before that I found myself dropping it out of my rotation due to its inane story plotting and thinly justified set pieces. It continually frustrated with prescriptive mission design that led you through interesting moments in uninteresting ways.
The core mechanics have been polished to their finest: the driving dropped the heavy handling of GTA IV for an appropriately Hollywood presentation. The cover system was tightened, with elements from the excellent Max Payne 3 added into the shooting. All of that only served to highlight how staid the moment to moment play of Grand Theft Auto has been. Rockstar provided a world whose structure and mechanics fell apart by themselves. It’s also undoubtedly provided one of the best realized digital worlds ever made.