25% in and the only thing I can think of is: thank God this 50 is over. In many ways this has been an odd fifty because we have had to tiptoe around with every game that I have ever played. That meant pretty much no fighting games in ages and major series like Resident Evil and Mario were pretty much avoided.
This 50 was also the time when we got a stick up our arses about making sure that we don’t have another Reset Generation situation and played all the games only available through online means. I know look forward to the next 50 where Jeroen will now be going through the same deal of not playing games he’d played before.
Best Game I Had Not Previously Played
This was one of the first games that I had played through to completion for a very long time. It could easily be the headliner in the final category but nothing really came close to how much I loved this game. In Mass Effect I went for the route of a female protagonist with a good heart who romances a hot (surprisingly so… for a video game) officer.
By no means am I saying that this was a bad bunch of games. Quite the contrary actually. Very early in the bunch we had Assassin’s Creed II which had a surprising amount of Renaissance based freedom… I don’t know how long it took me to climb the Duomo but I was glad I did. I also fell in love with little 2D creatures in the realm of Darwiniaย and learned to love street art in Jet Set Radio Future.
Worst Game
Whilst there have been a lot of really good games in this 50 there have been some absolute stinkers. The one I’m highlighting is Skool Daze. It’s clear to see how this has influenced later games but not only is it hard to play due to the controls but it just seemed unnecessarily difficult in places.
Then there was Eamon which just bored me silly… sorry text adventure lovers.
Most Surprising Game
Anyone who knows me knows that zombies can really freak me out. I like films such as Zombieland and Shaun of the Dead. The Walking Dead is a series that I keep up with. However, when it comes to games with zombies in… I suddenly become somewhat of a wreck. The reason that Left 4 Deadย is my most surprising game is that it really was the first time that I was able to not only stomach zombies but also taking a lot of pleasure in massacring the undead.
I was also pleasantly surprised by the beautiful graphics in Auditorium which stands in our ever-growing pile of games that come close to art.
Biggest Disappointment
Okay, so there was one game that I had been looking forward to playing for a long time. We had a bit of a false start since, stupidly for a minigame-based game, you had to play through a rather stupid single-player mode to unlock them all. I am of course talking about Raving Rabbids.ย There are some great little bits in here but as a package it was frustrating and disappointing.
In a close second place is the MMORPG Eve Online.ย I’ve heard so much hype about this and I know that it rewards a lot of playing time to get to the heart of it but the gameplay was just not matched by the magical space visuals.
Games We Kept Playing
This is hard to isolate just one game for this since there have a been a large number played afterwards. Since I was surprised how much I loved this game and the amount of time I ended up investing in my character. Yes, Korean-based MMORPG Aion: The Tower of Eternity took up much more time than I expected… then I ended up with a frog and I was lost to the world of angels and spell casters.
As I previously mentioned I completed Mass Effect and am very much looking forward to playing Mass Effect 2 in the near future. I also completed Time Gentlemen, Please which was a great laugh. Other games that ended up being played loads after finished writing it up included Castle Crashers, Shatter and Pure.