Call of Juarez: Gunslinger is great! Really surprised me a lot!
Year 2013: Most Played Games – Part 2
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 On 01/03/2014 at 03:03 AM by KnightDriver See More From This User » |
Lots of games provide a main story that lasts ten or less hours that I can say I finished in 2013. Some I still didn’t finish in that time, but at ten hours, I’d say I was interested enough to spend a weekend or two playing them and for that they deserve a mention.
Open Season [Xbox 360]
I love popping in movie liscenced games sometimes. They’re usually cheap and sometimes worth playing all the way through. This was one of them.
It’s a third person adventure game in an attractive wooded park land that reminds me of Yellowstone National Park. The game has some interesting mechanics involving throwing Skunks, Beavers, Squirrels and Ducks. Your object as Boog the Bear and Elliot the Buck, is to do tasks for these animals so they become your friends who then allow you to throw them at hunters. In the end, you go up against the prime hunter Shaw and, when you win, you unlock a load of mini games involving races, platforming, and target shoots.
I nearly got all the achievements but a couple of the mini games had top goals that were pretty hard to get. I like a challenge, but I don’t like beating my head into the ground just for an achievement.
Ubisoft Montreal (Prince of Persia, Assassin’s Creed) developed the game and they do a pretty good job on these licensed games.
The Cave [XBLA]
Created by Ron Gilbert of Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island fame, The Cave is an adventure game with lots of puzzles and some of the gameplay of a platformer. You get seven characters to choose from at the beginning and each has a series of different environments to solve and advance through a unique story line. The puzzles are a lot of fun and not too brutally difficult. The only one I had a lot of trouble with was the Time Traveller. There were objects you had to put by a well which changed as you moved to different time periods. Picking just the right combination to get the right result in each time period was tricky. Other than that it was just the right level of difficulty. The harder part was nailing all the achievement points which I finally did. There are various different goals, the hardest probably being getting through one complete playthrough without dying once. This can be a bit tricky if you just by accident step into a pit that you forgot was there. You can only fall just so far. Or not time your shield just right in front of a fire breathing dragon. I thoroughly enjoyed this game and couldn’t put it down for like three days until I had done everything that could be done in the game. I wished there was more. I hope Ron is doing something new because I’ll be right there. In the meantime, I can go back to Maniac Mansion and the Monkey Island series. What fun!
Call of Juarez: Gunslinger [XBLA]
I’ve played the first two full console games in the Call of Juarez series and really liked them. I finished the first game, but didn’t quite finish Bound in Blood. There was a stealth section that really steamed me, but I’m easily steamed by stealth in games. They are both first-person shooters in the old west with big open worlds and an interesting story. Gunslinger is like an abbreviated and more arcade version of those games with an elaborate scoring system. I have to say that the story was great and the shooting very smooth and exciting. The graphics look great too.
After ten hours of play, I could have kept going and replayed levels for achievements and high score, but I’m not all that competitive that way; however, the gameplay and visuals were so good, I may go back just to experience it again.
This was a welcome return to form after the strange turn to the modern day with COJ: The Cartel that came out a couple of years ago. I haven’t played it yet, but reviews complained of tastelessness. I’ve heard that it was designed for co-op and that single player is a chore, but I’ll play it one day. I’m a fan of the series.
Call of Duty 3 [Xbox 360]
I’ve been waiting a long time to play this game and I finally did this year.
It’s a WWII FPS that’s really gritty. In one mission you begin by pretending your dead in a pile of bodies while Nazi’s put bullets into anyone not quite dead. It’s harrowing and gives you some taste of the horrors of war.
The gameplay is rock solid and it’s very satisfying to play. I never did go for a complete achievement run though because the harder difficulty levels are super brutal. I just don’t have the patience for it.
The History Channel: Civil War - A Nation Divided [Xbox 360]
My gaming buddy and I have often mentioned trying to play every FPS ever made and this would include the History Channel games.
What makes this game stand apart from other FPS’s is its historical accuracy, at least in the depiction of the locations of various battles in the Civil War and the weapons used. I thought it was really neat to see how long it really takes to reload a musket and to feel like I was in the real locations and see how it looked to soldiers in the field. The gameplay was decent but I didn’t want to play this on the hardest difficulty because of issues where enemy would shoot through cover. I did have fun finding all the hidden letters that soldiers wrote and the photographs. At some point I’d like to take a shot at all the other History Channel games.
Blood Knights [XBLA]
This is a third-person action RPG like Baldur’s Gate Dark Alliance but with lots of melee fighting ala God of War. You become a vampire in the game and can drain blood as well, a key skill to beating the game. I guess I didn’t master it though because at the very end, I couldn’t beat the boss. The frustration was high like I had with the game Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale a few years ago, another game I couldn’t finish because of a glitch in the environment of the final boss fight. So for 90% of this game I really enjoyed, but ending as it did, I’m kind of annoyed by it now.
Ratchet & Clank Into Nexus [PS3]
So this is back to the old style of Ratchet and Clank games: lots of shooting, exploring, space travel, and platforming. What halted me though was the collecting. I got stuck on the third world and couldn’t find the last few collectibles to advance the story. I must’ve combed the area several times and still couldn’t locate them. I’d look up a FAQ but I feel like I shouldn’t have to do that and blame bad design. With so many other games I have to play, I took a break. At some point I’ll look up that FAQ and finish it, but I got better things to do.
God of War Ascension [PS3]
This fourth God of War game bothered me a little bit. It was loaded with way more QTE’s than I remember in either GOW 1 or 2 and on easy difficulty, it was very easy. God of War games are always tough even on the easiest difficulty. So this felt a little less like the God of War I was used to and more like a watered down version for the masses. Still, the visuals were outstanding and the addition of magic abilities on top of your usual fighting combos really made the screen pop with explosive effects. So I enjoyed it, but I don’t really want to play all those QTE’s again, even if the fighting is still fun.
Halo 4 [Xbox 360]
MC fading to the background as Commander Laskey
and Spartan Sara Palmer start running the show.
Halo 4. What can I say. I’m a huge Halo fan but I fear the game outside of Bungie’s hands is becoming something else. What it is becoming is hard to say but it seems like it’s departing from its action roots and becoming a soap opera. I mean, relationships and ethics are the stuff of dramas not action stories. Long cut scenes with emotional melodrama just seem so out of place in this hard Halo Universe of conflict. There’s a job to be done, and Master Chief is the one to do it. Nuff said. Stop the chatter and get to the meat and potatoes of the series, shootin’ stuff ‘til it explodes.
And about the shooting. It’s taken a little too much influence from COD. It used to be a fun run-and-gun type shooter but now, even with strange aliens, it’s all about the head-shot and using cover while you reload for the millionth time. I like a good romp through a scifi world with a bad ass armored hero with a magically endless supply of amo who doesn’t cry when his AI is destroyed.
Every game now seems to be trying to please the mainstream with easy gameplay, melodrama, and realistic visuals. I feel like one of my favorite franchises is disappearing into just another Hollywood blockbuster of mammothly shallow proportions.
And oh yea, I liked it ok for ten hours. Maybe I’ll finish the Spartan Ops missions, maybe not.
And that's it for 2013. There are still many other 2013 games I didn't get enough time with or I still have to play that came out this year. I'm sure they'll continue to show up on future lists just like a lot of 2006 games did this year.
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