completionism 2022 - collector's edition part 1

So it came to pass that another twelve month period was at its end and lo they did say, it was good, bad or indifferent as whatever the case may be. 2022 was quite the year for a whole host of reasons but for the purpose of this blog post i am going to zero in on the old gaming habit. All those games I finally got around to clearing from the backlog this year as well as a few picked at random because spontaneity is not entirely dead yet. Not all of the games I played will be featured here of course, why if you want to read previous tales of the games I completed in the first half of the year then please divert your eyes to this post and this post. Yes its the blog entry so prolific it's arriving in four instalments. To the games...

No wait, Merry Christmas! Happy New Year! Now to the games...

Overwatch

Kicking off the second half of my gaming year with one from the 'I really should have gotten around to this sooner' stack of games on my to-play list. Incidentally it's also a part of the 'games with a live service component getting shut down' list due to it getting essentially replaced by its sequel which came out a short time ago. So at the time I thought it best to dive into the original experience of Overwatch, having not spent any real amount of time with it since 2017. Unsurprisingly it remains a fun well-balanced and highly monetised experience. All the polish and flair you would expect off Blizzard though so I can't be too hard on it despite the money extraction strategies being put to work here. Four talking science monkeys out of five!

Arcadegeddon

Here's a novelty if you have been reading the prior instalments of this series. A game that came out in 2022 that I also managed to play in 2022. Not many of those to be found around these here parts. It came out on PS+ so on a whim I gave it a few hours. Nice aesthetic, plays alright but it there was a faint feeling of busywork to it that is not altogether my thing these days. Objective based team play is fine to be sure but the way its set up here there, it felt a little by the numbers and more than a little 'been there' and 'done that'. A worthy experience for some but not for me. Two alien space arcades out of five!

Broforce

It was a year where I got somewhat fixated on the idea of completing not only games i haven't played before but also games I'd started way back when and never returned to. Broforce was one of these games that I spent a few hours with several years back but never actually completed. So in a random turn I found myself returning to it in 2022 and completing it. Lots of fun with this one all said, it was explosive and lively and brought some finely tuned chaos into proceedings. Possibly a few too many dominos falling over at once and the difficulty spike in the latter half of the game was a bit much but all said, I liked this one. Three steroidal action movie stereotypes out of five!  

Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon Classic Edition

Random side story about this one but in the way these things happen, I caught some of the soundtrack to this game way, way, way back on one of those randomly generated Spotify playlists. I do recall the original version of this add-on for Far Cry 3 when it came out back in 2013. I'm letting that sink in for a moment because I really did intend on getting around to this one somewhere in the first half of the last decade. Honestly! So yes my gaming to-do list being this bad is not a new thing by any stretch. Anyhow, so thanks to having the soundtrack in regular rotation for years i'd felt like I'd already played this game out in my head and actually playing it now? Well it didn't disappoint. A pared back version of Far Cry with its innumerable missions, collectibles and myriad other things to do is, on paper, no bad thing. Blood Dragon ended up being a nice pacey affair with a neat atmosphere and an unwavering commitment to the humour it brings. Four synthwave ballads out of five!

The Magic Circle

I remembering catching some word of this game a few years back. Not much stuck out about the game itself other than it was a first person adventure through some retro 90's videogame aesthetics with some voice work from Doctor Venture himself, James Urbaniak. On that basis alone the game hooked me in and now I've finally played it. it's not very good alas. Yes its written well and performed in the same vein, but as a game this might be a candidate for one of the poorest ones to make my to-play list. It's comes with a decent line in commentary on game development and messianic corporate personality cults but its pretty rough around the edges when it comes to the actual gameplay. I would say it might be the worst game I've played this year but another game may have pipped it to the post there (see part 2). Ultimately if you're going to be all wry in your commentary about the shortcomings of games from yesteryear you do need to provide a game that is fun to play at the very least. One frustrated development hell out of five!

TRON RUN/r

One from the random pile here. I've always felt like TRON was a property in search of a decent game adaptation. I mean of all the properties out there to jump the divide from films into gaming, it seems weird that we aren't complaining about a veritable glut of TRON games. Then again its perhaps not so surprising. Personally I feel the first film is not as good as everyone remembers and the second one not as bad (but still not good). Anyhow this is a long winded way of saying that TRON RUN/r is actually a surprisingly fun game that does justice to the aesthetics of TRON with an endless runner game. Even my ageing reflexes had fun with this one. it does have some obnoxious single-use paid-DLC going on though so be wary of that. Three light cycle collisions out of five!

Mercenary Kings

See the entry for Broforce for my comments about finishing games I started years ago. Actually this one shares a lot of DNA with that game. Same vein of humour based on 80's action movie archetypes, same over-the-top more-is-more approach to violence but unlike Broforce this game didn't know when to end. A point I go on about in this very blog post. Again the look and feel of it is great, the combat is satisfying and clearly a lot of good will has gone into its making. It's also a case study in how a surplus of content can really subtract more than it adds to the experience. Two exploding killbots out of five!

Hotshot Racing

A game ripped out of the look and feel of 90's style arcade racers. Not a huge amount to the experience but its the rare example of a game that does what it needs to do and then takes it home whilst the going is good. So in that sense can't fault the experience. It's a hit of good nostalgia as opposed to the bad nostalgia that comes with its own host of issues (see The Magic Circle). it's uncomplicated, I had fun with it and once I got through the single player campaign, I was happy to call it a day with Hotshot Racing. Three ridge racers out of five!

The KIng of Fighters Collection: The Orochi Saga

Sense of Humour Failure: The Game was a real chore for me as you might surmise. A collection of the first five King of Fighters games, this was a collection that truly exhibited the best and worst of an entire generation of beat 'em ups. The difficulty, especially on the first two of these games, was cheap and ridiculous. The boss fights require either extra-sensory perception or extreme telepathy to win. All in all it did rather a good job of overshadowing its good points. The art style and the aesthetic is great and characterful, the fight mechanics themselves are snappy and responsive. It just turned into a massive chore to play by the end so I can't recommend it. What I can do however is spin a blog entry out of the post-fight screens which I did right here. Two impossible Rugal fights out of five!

Action Henk

I saw a meme recently that reminded me of this game. What did it say again?

Yeah that's the one. Now remember i was just coming off the previously mentioned King of Fighters Collection going into Action Henk. I'd assumed it was going to be light-hearted, perhaps even funny, maybe a gently increasing difficulty curve at the most to deal with. What I got was less a curve and more a sharp 90 degree turn into the ridiculously hard. Steering high-speed action figures along zig-zagging rollercoaster courses could have been a good time. Indeed I'd go so far as to say there is a fun game in Action Henk for the first few levels but the novelty soon wore off. It might be the only game on this list where I haven't played all the way to the end because I couldn't see the enjoyment of said completion exceeding the frustration of getting there. Another potential candidate for worst game I played this year but again I think a late-comer to the race has just robbed it of the honour. One incomplete rollercoaster set out of five!

Assassin's Creed: Unity

So at some point this year I realised I was a great many games behind in the Assassin's Creed franchise. i played Black Flag back in 2018 and gave it a rest for a while. For some reason or another it hasn't been a series I was especially invested in since the beginning. The Assassin's conflict with the Templars and all the pseudo-history crammed in to pad out the narrative just didn't feel especially coherent or interesting. It feels like a series where they are just cramming in content and getting it out the door to meet release windows. I'm not sure if they have made a compelling case for the existence of any of these games since the Italian Renaissance loomed large over them. This one though, based in revolutionary France did alright by me. A benefit of playing games a good few years removed from their release means I avoid the many issues that plague games like this at launch and boy did Unity have problems at launch. Playing it in 2022 though, it was 99% a polished experience that impressed me with the scope of its world and its detail. It even tried mixing up the whole Assassin/Templar conflict up a little so it gets points for that too. Three hidden blades out of five!   

Assassin's Creed: Syndicate

After playing one Assassin's Creed game that pleasantly surprised me, I just happened to play another. This one is of course the Victorian London entry into the series and built upon the good bits of the previous entry to create something that was, dare I say, fun? Yes I had genuine enjoyment playing this game, both in the main story and all the many side-quests along the way. Much as with the previous game, the depiction of the time and place was a treat for the eyes and all rendered with a fine eye for detail. To my surprise, this game pulled off the same trick that Infamous: Second Son and First Light pulled off, making all the content feel cohesive and fun without it feeling like a chore or just eating time for the sake of it. It's not something I see pulled off successfully very often so I will big it up here when I see it. Four industrial revolutions out of five!

Papers, Please

Here's a modern classic I've long been meaning to get around to. The much lauded and much awarded Papers, Please from 2013. Fun fact, if you want to play this on a Sony gaming device and the majority of my gaming this year has been on a PlayStation, then the only way you can do so is to play it on the much beloved but sadly neglected PlayStation Vita. So I did just that, loading up the old favourite and hoping Sony hadn't shut down their Vita store yet. They hadn't so I acquired said game and well, what am I going to say here that's any different to the acres of praise it has received elsewhere? It's a neat conjuring trick of a game, a nightmarish bureaucratic multi-tasking hell of a game in fact. Almost everything about it is finely judged and balanced and I'm sorry I didn't get around to this one sooner. Five sets of corresponding identification out of five!

Hitman (2016)

Rounding off the first half of this entry is the start of the most recent trilogy of Hitman games. The 2016 reboot? Restart? Do-over? Continuation? At least one of the above anyway. It's one of those series I have admired from afar in the past and never gotten around to playing myself. This one was rather good, a proper sandbox feel to the proceedings and ample freedom to pick an approach and see it out to the end, bitter or otherwise. It walks the fine line between no-nonsense and nonsense rather well to boot so yes I can safely say I hugely appreciated this assassination-sim. Four unfortunate deaths by falling light fixtures out of five!

So that's it for this instalment of the games I played this year but it's not done yet. Yes somehow, some way I found the time to clear even more of them from the to-play list of infinite dimensions. So next time its the complete completion of the list of games I played in 2022, completed. See you then!