What is an action game? Any game with action can be considered, but in my opinion, these are action/adventure games or games that are cinematic and full of flash and adrenaline-packed adventure.
Nier: Automata
NieR was the best action game this year because it was something new and fresh. While it wasn’t the most technically impressive game out there, the action was phenomenal with fast-moving characters and fluid combat against interesting enemies. It’s a weird one-of-a-kind game that we rarely get to see.
This was a great year for multi-platform games. Exclusives were a bit dry, so many heavy hitters came out of the woodworks, so you were happy with any system you owned.
Nier: Automata
NieR: Automata may not have looked the best, but it sure played the best. With fantastic combat, an interesting story, great characters, unique visual style, and gorgeous locales to explore, NieR was something fresh and different than all the sequels we got this year
Rayman has been a struggling series since the PS1 games came out. There have been spin-offs, ports, and terrible sequels since then, but Origins redeems the series. There isn’t really a story here except that you’re saving lums and princesses of different lands to earn powers. There aren’t any cut scenes or voiceovers because this goes back to its old-school roots, and yes, the game is hard.
The controls are silky smooth, and so are the animations. It helps that the controls are responsive, as well as that you can jump around the levels that require focus and skill to navigate. Obstacles lay in your paths, such as treacherous waters, enemies, and fire. Each new area has unique enemies, hazards, and an overall layout that is very nice to look at. Enemies can be jumped on or punched, and after that, they inflate. You can use the Vita screen to touch them so they pop to get the light inside, which actually makes this version more forgiving than the consoles. When you jump around to find lums, you will see them in hidden objects, and some will be trapped in bubbles. You can touch them to pop them up to add to your collection, which is much easier. While you’re bounding about the cleverly laid-out levels, you can find hidden areas with cages full of lums that you can find by hearing their cries for help.
The game is just so cleverly designed, with levels that are tricky but not so tough that you can’t forgive the game. You may restart a few times, but it actually requires skill instead of luck or exploiting the game’s faulty controls (if they were). Sliding around on the ice, dashing towards an enemy and punching them, grabbing onto a ledge, and then jumping up on top of an enemy can be tricky, but it can be done with a little practice and a quick reaction. The levels slowly get harder, but the whole point is to collect the lums and get medals at the end of each level. Save enough, and you can unlock special treasure missions where you have to chase one down through a series of tricky obstacles.
Origins is just so clever and charming that you can’t really hate it. There are plenty of characters to unlock, as well as extras. This game is perfect for people who love exploring levels and finding secrets. There are plenty of levels and things to find to keep you busy for many hours. I do wish there were some more features for the Vita besides just using the touchscreen. However, what is here works, and nothing got downgraded from the consoles. I can only really recommend this game to hardcore platformer fans because of the difficulty.
Game of the year is the hardest of them all. What makes the game of the year? Everything must be almost perfect, well balanced, epic, have a great story, characters, mechanics, graphics, and everything that makes up a game must be amazing and better than the competition. I wish I could have picked more than one because there were so many amazing games this year.
Skyrim actually wasn’t my first choice. It won because of how grand in scale the game was and the attention to detail that only a few games this year did. Over 100 hours of gameplay, unique characters, a grand story, beautiful graphics, lots of customization, and a gorgeous soundtrack made Skyrim come out on top of the entire pile. Skyrim is a special game in the sense that no other RPG or game can do it.
A great platformer must charm, be fun to play, and have some great mechanics. This year didn’t see too many good platformers, but the ones that were good were damn good. Most platformers have a problem being unresponsive, sloppy, or just not fun at all. Great controls, some very fun puzzles, challenging combat of some sort, and even a memorable story help.
Rayman won this year due to how beautiful, passionate, and charming the game was. Not only was the game chock full of smooth animations, fun combat, and a memorable story and characters, but it was a reboot of a franchise that has been doomed for almost a decade. Rayman will leave you smiling and wanting more when you’re done and that’s exactly how a platformer should be.
Graphics are great when it comes to textures, resolutions, and lighting but what about the art itself? Some games are living breathing pieces of art and are one of a kind. Sometimes a game may be inferior technically but surpass in style and better art. This year was more geared toward technical showcases, but there were a few artsy games that popped up.
Alice won over everything else because it is just oozing with art and substance from American McGee’s crazy mind. It brings out the darkness in Alice in Wonderland and every single speck on the screen has something unique about it. It has been a long time since something like this has come out where you want to hang every screenshot on your wall. Alice truly deserves this award hands down, but all I can say is you have to play it to understand why.
JRPGs that were the standard are now being taken over by western RPGs, and one of the main developers responsible for this is Bioware. Dragon Age: Origins is a very deep game, mainly in politics, religion, and mythology, that is reminiscent of Tolkien lore. Not only is the dialog witty and humorous, but every piece of dialogue is spoken with great acting. Each character is memorable, and Bioware really does it with their morality gameplay because it takes ten minutes to decide a choice since they change gameplay so much, more so than in any other Bioware game.
The game has different factions you can play as (dwarf, human, elf, then different classes in those races), and each takes about 50+ hours to play (my first playthrough was 41 hours). You start by customizing your character, but that isn’t the deepest part of the game. When you start out with any race, you learn the combat basics, which are pretty deep yet also very simple.
The actual combat itself is the standard Hit the attack button and watch the characters hack away. You earn experience by killing enemies and level up accordingly. The game has a radial menu that lets you access your potion and trap-making skills and techniques, as well as combat tactics. You can create traps and potions by learning the skills over time and by using ingredients found throughout the game world (I found both of these useless). Skills range differently between mages and warriors, but warriors can learn different fighting styles such as two-handed, dual weapons, sword and shield, and even archery. Each class can learn other classes’ techniques, and that’s the beauty of Origins. There are dozens of different skills to learn, and you won’t learn them all before beating the game.
The sheer depth of the game is mind-boggling, but I know one thing that people are concerned about, and that is side quests. There are dozens upon dozens of them to keep you satisfied, but of course, you don’t have to complete them all. There are also tons of Codex pages to pick up and read in this deep and wonderful lore that Bioware has created. There is enough stuff to read to fill a history book, but if you’re not the reading type, you can just skip over this. There are hundreds of different items to obtain, from armor and weapons to ingredients and gifts to make characters like you better.
After playing for about 5–10 hours, you will realize how much the game relies on your actions to tell the story. Unlike other Bioware games, you will notice these changes right away, and sometimes a decision in the beginning can progressively make things worse or better for you throughout the game, and it will make you regret what you did, and that is brilliant. The deepest part of the game is the menu itself, in which you equip your gear, check quests, codex pages, and your map, but there isn’t much to explain other than your normal inventory menu. Thankfully, the game steers away from unnecessary stats that boggle your mind and make you want to quit playing.
Playing the game is fairly simple, and the controls are easy. You can control all four party members, which gives you a nice tactical advantage, but most of the time I just played as my own character. Just remember, when a character dies during a battle, you have to wait for all enemies in the area to be killed for them to be resurrected (unless you have a mage with that skill). I found the game very difficult on the normal setting (almost impossible), so the easy setting had to be used, and that was challenging enough. Traveling between areas is easy enough since you use a world map, but you can encounter battles in between the areas.
One of my biggest gripes about the game is that it is pretty ugly. The Xbox 360 version is the ugliest, with flat, muddy textures that look like you’re playing on the lowest settings. Why this is, I have no idea, but there are also frame rate issues and long load times every time you enter a new area. There is also some sort of collision detection issue because when you press A to attack, enemy party members will sometimes dance around the enemy before attacking, and this can kill you in tight situations. This seems to be a huge issue when many characters are against one enemy.
In other words, if you love deep stories that deal with Blights, an Archdemon, and a deceitful king, then buy this game, but try to get the PS3 or PC versions since they look better. Dragon Age is probably one of the best western-made RPGs in decades, and with so many items, skills, party members, techniques, and side quests, you are in for hundreds of hours of addictive RPG gameplay.
I’m neither an X-Men fan nor a comic book fan, so you can expect a fair, unbiased review first off. One great thing to think about when thinking about this game is that you don’t need to be an X-Men or comic fan to like this game; all you have to do is like action/adventure games (God of War, Prince of Persia, Bionic Commando, etc.). The game starts out pretty heavy and shows some great graphics, cinematic gameplay, and great voice acting (by none other than Hugh Jackman himself) all while skydiving into the forests of Africa. When you land, you’ll be shown a quick tutorial on how to use heavy and light attacks, along with combos. You’ll learn how to do quick kills, which are a timed heavy attack complete with a zoom-in slow-mo, gruesome, and gory kill. Yes, I said gory, and yes, this is the first mature-rated comic book game ever made, and I’m so glad Marvel got off their high horse (cough DC) and started showing their characters’s true feral side.
Most of Wolverine is based around combat since the story is simply only for hardcore fans, people who saw the movie (I hear it’s excellent and Mr. Jackman is the best Wolverine yet), or the fact that the story is just too cut up and flashed back to really get a grip on. A lot of the combat may feel repetitive sometimes, but it’s all cut up thanks to great platforming sections, some action button timing, some really big guys you must take on, and sprinkle on some epic boss fights. Each enemy must be killed differently since some are not weak enough to make quick kills and must be weakened; some can’t be thrown off ledges; and some enemies can only be killed in feral sense mode because of their camouflage. Each enemy has different quick-kill animations, thus making the game feel less repetitive. You can unlock different moves by leveling up, along with permanently increasing your health and rage meter. Rage always requires you to perform four of the rage moves, which range from a blender-style claw spin to a saw blade-style spin. Each one can be upgraded for a longer time—more power, more speed, etc. You also have three slots for mutagens, which somehow passively enhance the gameplay by adding some more health, making rage moves more powerful, or gaining more experience per kill. All these are easily in sync with each other, along with a great tree that allows you to learn things about your enemies for every kill, so they die faster later on in the game. This immense skill tree really works brilliantly and keeps the game from feeling cookie-cutter.
The game does have puzzles when it comes to environments, and some puzzles are even part of the environment. These puzzles are never hard to figure out thanks to your feral senses, but the timing of certain puzzles can be frustrating. Speaking of frustrating, the only real gripe I have with the game is that the difficulty isn’t balanced very well, so several levels will be easy, then suddenly an ultra-hard one, then an easy one, and maybe a few hard ones. The same goes for certain sections in levels, and this can lead some people to throw their controller at the wall…or a person. A lot of puzzles consist of pushing blocks to get up on certain ledges, pulling panels out of walls to unlock certain doors, and some level-length puzzles, such as using the hand of a giant robot to destroy the head and firing lasers to get through the only door out of the base.
Let’s talk boss fights. Some range from other X-Men universe characters (Saber Tooth for one) that are easily killed, along with some that are hundreds of stories high (like the epic robot boss fight that you fight from space while falling down to earth—yes, uber epic). Boss fights aren’t annoying; you just have to learn their moves.
The visuals in the game are astounding, and using the Unreal 3 engine, you can expect some of the finest-looking graphics yet. Everything looks sharp, clean, and highly detailed for your ultimate Wolverine experience. There are some nice unlockables for fans of the game, and I guarantee that this game will turn haters into lovers.
thebinarymessiah.com 
Yep! The fact that I forgot about this game until you made a comment proves that.