Ektris

It's on my limited Christmas list my family still requests, so maybe this time next week I will have it. I just looked it up and apparently I didn't even bother collecting everything. Thought I had, huh.. But that's probably from just how much I started to dislike the sailing. Once I got faster sails and could do a little fighting, there were brief moments of fun, but still I just fast travelled to do as little sailing as possible and likely missed stuff.

Just Skyward Sword and Ocarina of Time at the moment. Really been meaning to get Majora's Mask, but... lazy. It is rather nice, and a little uplifting. A good note to end on.

This title I may not have started this year (I actually started it when I got my WiiU in July of 2014... and then promptly forgot about it), but I played the bulk of and finished the game during it. The Wind Waker is only my third time experiencing the Legend of Zelda series. To say it was different from the others I've played would be quite the understatement. As far as gameplay is concerned, no it wasn't all that unfamiliar. Besides navigation, which honestly became quite laborious. I think it's one of the reasons I stopped playing it for so long; I had just gotten disinterested in sailing around what seemed to be a fairly empty sea. I did get used to it and found some fun in it upon revisiting. Man, that fetch quest at the end where you have to just sail to random places was just not that great though. What makes Wind Waker stand out is of course its art style. I rather liked it. Definitely different, but not in a bad way. This was a brighter world than the last Zelda title I played, and there was just something about the character designs I found endearing. Also, Tetra was pretty cool. I do want to delve into this series more, and this HD remake made that pretty easy. So if you're like me, have a WiiU and haven't played this before, it's totally worth it (even if I did get it for free heh). ~|ET|~

I'm apparently getting silverware from my sister. Which is cool because I need some more. Ayup.

For most of them, I really, really don't like the silver at all. Onua's works. Maybe Kopaka's because it's not that different. But the rest I don't like.. or maybe it's just the masks themselves I don't care for? Not sure yet. But the silver's not helping at any rate. The transparent blends with gold I don't particularly mind though. I'd have probably preferred full gold, but they aren't all that bad to me. ~|ET|~

Umarak by far. Unlike this year, where I still haven't got most of the villains, I want to get Umarak right away. The creatures are a toss up because I honestly like all of them, but Uxar is my pick because... looks coolest? Although Ikir comes close. ~|ET|~

Oh yeah this is 100% a Mark of the Ninja game lol. Didn't watch much gameplay for it, but immediately recognized it. So if you liked that game, definitely get these too! I really didn't like it enough to want to try that one though heh.

I must admit that this isn't quite what I had in mind when I joined the chorus requesting that the Assassin's Creed franchise go east. Nonetheless, they did listen, and so I felt compelled to give Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China a try. I'm not sure that I've played a game quite like this before, and maybe that's why I found it more than a little challenging at times. It has a heavy reliance on stealth and combat is not something you (or at least I) excel at, which means it was quite the turnaround from where the series has been going in the main series. It took me a while to get used to, and by the end I still don't feel as if I was any good at the combat. The necessity to be as stealthy as possible really makes you have to think about your actions before executing them, which I did generally like. I just messed up quite a lot haha. My problem with the story is... was there one? I feel like we got more characterization and story out of Embers for Shau than here. It was just brief moments of dialogue in-between levels about getting revenge on those who destroyed the Brotherhood in China, which you do... Yay I guess. Overall this was a neat game, but not one I think I'd recommend for casual fans. It was pretty difficult and just didn't feel important to play at all. I'll still probably be getting the India and Russia variations when they come out though, being the completionist that I am. Still debating on how much more I want to cover in this series. There doesn't seem to have been much interest in it, which is pretty disappointing. There's really only one more game that I absolutely want to discuss (not just talk in a soapbox..), but there's still a few titles that I finished this year that I could write about. ~|ET|~

Well that's certainly different. I'd even pick one up just for the novelty of it... If it got released here, and since the last one didn't... Eh, I hope it does. It's neat enough. ~|ET|~

Only a handful of games on my list I want to talk about. I decided the last point-and-click will be the last game I talk about, because I want to go out on a really high note. So next up, the latest installment in another franchise I've been into for years. Halo 5: Guardians has me back into Halo in a big way. Halo 4 I beat, played a small amount of multiplayer, and promptly just moved on from. The Master Chief Collection got me hooked for a while just from sheer amount of content (hmm.. maybe I'll pad this series out by talking about that..), but that became tiring. Halo 5 is fun in a way I've not felt since Halo: Reach although I don't think I'll go as insane for it as I did that game. Because that was a bit too obsessive haha. Multiplayer's been refreshing becaues of Warzone. It has snippets of Firefight, my favorite gametype ever, mixed in with a revamped Invasion and your classic Slayer. It's different for Halo and that's probably why I'm liking it so much. Most of the classic playlists are still there of course, with a few more casual ones I'd like to see return, which help when I start to get a bit tired of Warzone. With how long those matches take, a short burst of a different objective can help. Character customizations and REQs are just insane though. I'm probably never going to change my armor away from Helioskrill though because it's as close to playing as an Elite I'll get haha. I think the campaign was an improvement over 4, though that's not saying much. There were a few things I really didn't like. The very first non-combat level was unexpected and a nice change of pace. Walking around a colony camp casually was neat. Then we went to Sanghelios... Also cool to see that world finally. But they had non-combat levels twice there in the exact same space only one level removed. And that was actually enough to make me not like them as much. It came off then like they just wanted to pad the level count, and I just wanted to see a different type of environment if we were to get more. My much, much bigger problem is just how many of the levels had us play as Master Chief: three out of fifteen. I had no problem with playing as Locke (rather liked jumping between Chief and Arbiter when I played Halo 2 for the first time earlier this year) and welcomed new characters, but man... It felt like we barely saw any of Blue Team's journey and the split was too heavily in Fireteam Osiris' favor. I just wanted to play as John more. The advertising campaign going into this game was about their conflict and discovering the truth, but the game ended up being too one-sided in my opinion. Anyways, it was a rather standard Halo game for gameplay for the most part. Spartan charging and ground pounding were fun ways to find alternate routes, as well as being a blast to do in multiplayer. And... and... oh yeahhh! Your teams! Playing my solo legendary run (which I always do first because I'm crazy), I found them indespensible. Being able to get revived instead of just constantly restarting - though I still did wipe plenty often - is so helpful. It's hard to explain really. Halo 5: Guardians just feels fun again. I'm also even interested in where the story's going to go from here, which I wasn't at all after the last game. So from my point of view, 343 also made up big time. ~|ET|~

Tahiri Veila came to mind pretty quickly. So let's go with her.

It should come as no surprise to anybody that knows me that I got this game. I've been a diehard fan since the very first one, so of course I was going to. Assasin's Creed Syndicate had it rough, having to follow last year's Assasin's Creed Unity. Which I fully acknowledge had many faults and rather deserved its criticisms. (Even if I did not experience the technical glitches many did - in fact I think I experienced more in Syndicate, having fallen through the world a few times.) Which is quite a shame, as by most accounts Syndicate was a very good game. This iteration of the franchise introduced quite a few new mechanics that felt refreshing and were just really fun to use. I loved racing through the streets of London on a carriage and loved even more zipping across its skyline with the grappling hook. It made traversing the map, in all directions, fun and a lot easier than before. After as many games as there have been, there really weren't good ways to make scaling a building with your hands interesting anymore.. this addressed that rather nicely I believe. Add to that moving cranes and other industrial era scenery, and it did feel different enough. Combat changed yet again, and I wasn't too crazy about it at first. While the customization that Unity introduced for armor and weapons was still around, albeit slimmed down a bit, actual combat actions seemed slimmed too far. At least it felt harder than it has been, but counter attacks still solve most everything. But I really just missed being able to run through the streets extending my hidden blade repeatedly and all the other fun flourishes drawing weapons randomly did. Ubisoft really dropped the ball in not letting us use the cane sword as a freaking cane! Seriously, why couldn't we do that?! Story is where I think Assasin's Creed Syndicate was the weakest. Jacob and Evie were great characters, and just having a main game in the series feature rather prominently a female character was fantastic. I used her quite a lot for side missions because of her enhanced stealth abilities. But what they were fighting for didn't seem to matter much. There were elements there, like what their father did to be so well respected or why Henry was the only operative in London and who were the others that the Fryes left at the beginning, that framed the game that were honestly a lot more interesting to me. "Let's just go find a piece of Eden" sums up the plot too well. At least some of the Templars they made were interesting, and I did really enjoy meeting and working with actual historical figures. Dickens was pretty funny and I just rather liked Bell. Finally, although not as much as what I would have liked, Ubisoft did pull through with improving the modern day story relative to Unity. There still needs to be a whole lot more of it for me. Overall, I think Ubisoft improved tremendously with this year's Assasin's Creed game. It was a good game again. It may not make up for their previous missteps for some and I understand that. For me, the shameless fanboy, it was enough heh. ~|ET|~

Hi, Bob. ~|ET|~

I wanted to take a break from episode point-and-clicks to get the stink of Game of Thrones out of my mind before talking about the last one I played this year. So let's go to another Games With Gold title. Rayman is a twenty year old series and this is only the second game I played in it. There was this GBC title I had that I can't even remember the title of, but I know I was never very good at it and thus never had interest in trying it out again. Then a few years ago I saw some friends in college playing Rayman Origins and thought it looked really fun and the owner insisted it was. Only played a level a few times myself, so didn't get much of an impression though. When Rayman Legends was put up for free for Xbox Gold members, I figured it was finally time I tried it out again. Plus I hadn't played a platformer in a while. My friend was right - it was really fun. Some of the later levels were a little challenging, as was collecting every single Teensie (better believe I did though). It was a colorful platformer with some pretty wacky characters to spice things up. My favorite levels were by far the music ones. Those were really creative and tons of fun to replay. That's about all I have to say on this title. Rayman Legends is pretty straithfroward as far as platformers go, but it was a fun one. If you like them, give it a shot. ~|ET|~

Meow. ~|ET|~

A little something for everyone except Beast Wars fans who wanted its 20th anniversary celebrated. I haven't bought anything since Devastator and probably won't again until I find Bruticus. I'm really looking forward to Titans Return though. A lot of those look very promising. ~|ET|~

This year marked the first time I played an episodic game that wasn't yet complete. Two, in fact. I didn't start either when they first released, but still got to experience the wait for about half of the episodes to release. Telltale's Game of Thrones left me wanting to never do that again ever. I understood going into this that it would take time to complete this game. That was fine. From the titles I had already completed, I knew they were relatively quick games anyways so was okay with a bit of fun spread out through the year as a taste of a different style of game inbetween all the others I play. But man, Telltale's inability to maintaint a consistent release schedule compared to, say, Dontnod, was really aggravating. Especially with just how short the Game of Thrones episodes felt when isolated. Unless it's a title I'm really interested in, I'll probably just wait for seasons to complete in the future. Which puts me in a bit of a predicament. This past year I finally really got into A Song of Ice and Fire. I'm caught up on the show and have read the first few books. So this side story game seemed perfect given how much I was enjoying the other content. It also means I'll probably ineveitibly still get Game of Thrones season 2, as I want to finish what I started. As this game left nothing finished. No choices mattered here. That's the impressiong many share and I will strongly echo. No matter who you are playing as (character diversity here was a nice thing I'll admit), you all fail. Miserably. Some might try to argue that "that's just how Game of Thrones is," but I disagree. Even if it's not who you're rooting for, some character does succeed. And with how many we got to control here - plus just it being a game, not a book or a television show - the fact that not one makes it out with their head held high is a little unbelievable and simply not much fun. I suppose Gared didn't really fail, but the loss of his friends along the way sucked. Plus given what you see with Rodrick/Asher, he's too late anyway. Even if his enthralled forces can remove the Whitehills in the next season, you're not saving much. The Wall and the north are my favorite parts about the series, so I did like playing Gared the most. I just felt disappointed by the end because of everything happening he doesn't know about. Asher or Rodrick... I played them very differently so that was nice while it lasted, to see and live these very different lives. Asher is the surviving heir in my game for what it's worth. Ugh, then Mira... I thought it'd be cool to see some politics at first, but ultimately no matter how you played the game, Telltale decided in the end that nope, she was actually horrible at it all along and the rest of her life is either going to be horrible or... she's... dead?? Wow. Huh. So basically she won't be a playable character next season or they'll kill her somehow anyway to make the storytelling easier. Because there's no real choices, everything gets funneled to the same ending with just minor events along the way changed. That's how this game felt. Like nothing mattered. You were leading to... nothing. Literally! As the season didn't tell a full story. That's my biggest gripe here. At least with The Walking Dead, each season so far felt like it did a good job telling a whole story while still leaving an open road for the future. Here, too much was left unresolved Oh and the art... Plus the game engine... Ugh. They wanted this game to look like an oil painting. I do not feel like they succeeded. The backgrounds early on (before I learned what their intent was) had me thinking the game was just being glitchy and not rendering things properly as everything has this blur to it that's incredibly distracting. I also finally felt Telltale's engine woes where critical scenes would load slowly or stutter, making me miss quick time events. Game of Thrones is the first game that I'm not going to recommend. Not unless you're a diehard fan of the franchise and are interested in side stories at all. It was frustrating seeing your machinations not matter and annoying to realize going into the final episode that there would be no resolve just so they could push a second season. By the end, I just wasn't enjoying it as much and only going through the motions. ~|ET|~

I'm pretty sure Hulu also has the Unlimited Blade Works movie. Disregard that entirely. Start with Zero. It's a prequel series to the original and the series UBW was made by the same studio as more or less a direct sequel. It has a lot of throwbacks and will make more sense with the Zero context. So then you'd want to move on to the UBW series. It is indeed much better than the original Fate/Stay Night show. HOWEVER, and for whatever reason I've found this isn't a popular opinion, I absolutely recommend you still watch that original series afterwards. The thing about Fate/Stay Night is that it has a branching story - three in total, with the last being made into a movie soon. UBW is an alternate story and not the "true" story of the game/series. The 2006 anime follows the true story more closely. Both are still adaptations though and not entirely accurate I believe. No, it's admittedly not the greatest show. But if you've already gone through the other two, why not? I totally get the backlog complaint, so put this one wayyyy down on the list then.

This was the very first new game that I played this year. It's also the game that I can say hooked me on the Telltale episodic formula, for better or for worse (...more on that in a later installment). I mentioned last time my nostalgia for classic fairy tales helping me enjoy the art of Child of Light. This game obviously fueled that fire into an inferno in a different way. For those of you who may not have heard of the game before, The Wolf Among Us is a prequel story to the comic book Fables. I really need to read that now that it's finished. Anyway, it's about, well, fables. All those classic characters and their secret immortal lives among us. For a good point-and-click game, I feel you really need a solid story to make a successful game. I have some good news then! The story of The Wolf Among Us is definitively what hooked me. Bigby was a fun character to play and I really got invested in his investigation and struggles. I tried to play a very neutral Bigby that didn't want to give in to his true self. I cared about all the other characters and their losses. I remember feeling particularly bad about sending the Toads to the Farm, even though I knew it was my job and it was needed to keep everyone safe. This is also incidentally my favorite art style used in the Telltale titles I've played. It's appropriately evocative of a comic book while conveying the darker, grittier world you're experiencing. Since it's been almost a year, I can't recall any performance issues I experienced playing this game, although will acknowledge that that's kind of a known issue with Telltale's games (and a preview of my opinions for the aforementioned next entry). So just be aware of that, and sorry if you do have any problems. Overall, I simply recall really liking The Wolf Among Us as I played it. It was fun and I'd definitely recommend it (note it does have some pretty mature content though). Shame there's no second season on the horizon. ~|ET|~

Unfortunately it's been too long since I played it to remember much of the music. :/ I hope you get to finish it soon though.

Finally uploaded a newer masks list. It's missing Kopaka's new gold mask, but hopefully that'll be filled in soon. I also elected to not yet include the Creatures until we really know more about them. Unfortunately I also didn't include a new picture for the gold Kulta mask. Searches for a frontal view without it being on a set/MOC/anything else distracting kept bringing me to the same place. So if anyone has one to take a shot of (should just go buy the Villain Pack myself..), that'd be awesome. ~|ET|~

This is it. This is actually the game that I've been wanting to talk about since I played it months ago, so why not just start with it? Many friends whom I've gamed with before have probably heard of my disinterest for turn-based RPGs. There's no particular reason for it either. I've not even played a whole lot of them (particularly the heavy hitters like Final Fantasy), excluding Pokemon if one wants to count it. I'm just always saying I don't like them. Maybe it's the pacing or the grinding, but whenever I hear of or talk about one there's usually the voice in my head saying I probably wouldn't like it that much. It's generally an irrational disdain, but meh, people like what they like and don't like what they don't like for entertainment. Don't always have to justify it. With that in mind, I don't really remember why I gave Child of Light a look. Easy Achievements and being free at the time most likely. I sure am glad I did. I absolutely loved this game! The art style was wonderful, exploring the world was fun but not too difficult, and combat not as much of a bore as I feared. Let's talk about that last one first. It's all time-based which kept battles generally faster paced. I think that helped. Skill trees took time to iron out (meaning except for Aurora I stuck with the comanions I got later in the game once I got them because I knew what I was doing at that point and might have made mistakes earlier one leaving some weaker), but everyone had a clear role in the party that made strategizing easier. I really, really liked the mechanics Igniculus introduced and used him extensively. You probably have to. The timing and using him did mean you had to constantly be watching all characters and enemies to make sure you succeed, which personally helped in keeping me interested. The story is not anything earthshatteringly deep or complex. It's simple, but that doesn't hurt the game. I'd say it benefits from it, by making it easy to get attached to and root for the members of your party as they struggle against the clearly evil hold your stepmother has over the world. There were definitely some touching moments thrown in there with Aurora's family, and conversely Norah's betrayel definitely stung. I hadn't been expecting that at all, so really felt the hurt. The art is probably what won me over most in Child of Light. The entier game genuinely felt like I was reading an older classic fairy tale. I think it's great. There's a definite whimisical flair to everything, with enough twist to the darkness to make a clear divide from the light. It made me feel nostalgic for those old stories, so kudos there Ubisoft. Child of Light is a short, inexpensive, and incredibly fun game. I liked it a lot more than expected going into it. Of all the games I played this year, even amongst the AAA titles, it really stands out as one of my favorites. ~|ET|~

Ohhh you mean I can finally get to play it since the 15 person line at RTX was perpetually "capped"? >_< Did look fun from afar so... maybe I actually will take a look soon.

With no new Pokemon game this year (that I picked up), my blog was rather lacking in any gaming action. Sure, I picked up a good number, but I never really talked about them. All year long I kept wanting to write out more of my thoughts on various titles yet never got around to it. Luckily I kept a spreadsheet of all the games I played and beat this year to pick from! Because I'm a nerd like that. Just first need to double check that I didn't end up making entries for some that I forgot about haha. So we'll have a few Halos and Assassin's Creeds of course, but also really got into episodic games this year and dipped into a few things via Games with Gold I might not have otherwise considered. One in particular I keep thinking about whenever I want to write about a game. Plus it'll get me active here again, so that'll be cool. I plan to write the first entry some time this week. Until then- ~|ET|~

Would make more sense than his real name... Seriously, who names a kid "Natural"?? That you do. One of the better Amiibo.