It’s finally here! The end of the year is upon us, and so is award season. At the end of each year, I, as do many others, enjoy taking a look back at the previous months and giving the top-performers their due. Each year at HippoChippies, ten games are awarded in traditional “Game of the Year” fashion, but this year we have some surprises! Along with our top ten, we’re also dolling out awards in some new categories for the site, but ones you’ll hopefully enjoy reading as much as I have putting them together. The top ten will still be rolling out, but will be peppered in with the rest of the year’s recognition. We’re starting off today with 2014’s Best Use of Music.
“Best Use of Music” is a different award than “Best Song.” For the purposes of this award, I’m defining “Use of Music” as a song being used well for a specific purpose, rather than just being a well-made or catchy track. These songs are still good, but there’s a separate “Best Song” award for a reason. These tracks were used in a time and place to establish a mood or evoke a feeling in the player, and were dropped at just the right time to do so. Let’s get started.
It’s almost time for Game of the Year season, and HippoChippies will be having more awards than ever before. I’ve been planning some big things that will be happening soon, so if you like seeing the greatest achievements in the industry rewarded with heaps of praise, stick around. And, as usual, the normal posts about weird indie games and other nonsense will be popping up. So if you hate GotY stuff, there’s still content planned for you. (more…)
Games still keep coming fast, and the next few weeks will continue to be just as busy with Assassin’s Creed, Dragon Age, Far Cry 4, and too much more to remember. I’ve been picking favorites out of the bunch of new releases, and still always coming back to Hearthstone and Fantasy Life. I’ve actually finished some games for once, which is a relief when you’re trying to get hands on with everything.
So last week’s update turned into a lovefest about The Evil Within. Whoops.
Not much has changed on that front, The Evil Within is still great. I’m slowly working my way through it, along with about a half-dozen other great games. There’s so much out this month and next, it’s impossible for me to play all the way through everything I want too right now. I’m a slow-burn player to begin with, and will spend two months playing through five games at once, even if they’re all probably beatable in a week. But there’s so much out right now, it’s hard to help myself.
I can’t believe how much I’m enjoying The Evil Within. If you know me, you know that I love Resident Evil 4 above almost all other games. Imagine my surprise when I realized how closely it resembles Shinji Mikami’s masterwork, the best survival horror game of all time.
It isn’t perfect by any means, and the story doesn’t make the slightest effort to make sense. But the gameplay is there, and it feels closer to Resident Evil 4 than anything since. The extraordinary combat is back, along with RE4’s quirks, like shooting in the knee for a smartly timed, ammo-saving kill. Except now, instead of suplexing zombies, you’re lighting them on fire, and using well-timed fires to instakill other nearby creatures. You’ll always have several options to work around each combat encounter, and figuring out each tiny combat puzzle is just as satisfying as I’d hoped. Almost every encounter seems meticulously planned, and some later stages will definitely lead to moments where you’ll ask friends how they tackled each room.
Take note: This is a cool logo.
Here’s one example: I came across a pitch-black room and could hear enemies inside. I chose to shoot a weapon at the ground that produces light, and electrocutes enemies. From there, I backed onto a ledge and waited to pick out the shadows of enemies against the light on the wall, and picked off their heads with a sniper rifle. I missed one, which then tried to crawl onto the ledge I was hiding on, so I pulled my shotgun out and blasted his head off before he could stand up and feast on my tasty body. That was one segment that took about 5 minutes. There are several sections like this throughout the game, and you can tackle each of them in numerous, equally satisfying ways.
I loved exploring the environments in Resident Evil 4 for treasure and ammo, and most of that is still well represented here. Most areas have a series of optional paths to explore, usually while you’re being chased by an ungodly creature or two. Exploration will reward you with much-needed ammo caches, new weapons, new traps to use against enemies, and more. Even though you might have only found 2 shotgun shells in that abandoned house, you feel immensely more prepared for the next fight now that you found them. I watched a friend play, and he discovered a couple entirely new scenes than I found, just by exploring a new location that I never saw.
The story jumps erratically between locations, almost forcing you to question what’s going on and what you’ll see next. I can see why this is a problem for so many people, but it’s strung together like a series of horror vignettes, rather than some globe-trotting adventure story. I don’t mind having a quick burst of ideas until they run out, and immediately jumping into a new set of obstacles. Sure, I would rather there be a good story tying the events together, but the main reason I’m here is for the tension. That’s why short series like VHS and Yamishibai sit so well with me; they never have time to get boring.
Since Resident Evil 4, I’ve been waiting for someone to perfectly capture the essence of what made that game so good. Dead Space was very close, and was brilliant for different reasons, but made you too powerful to capture that same helpless feeling. If you’ve been waiting for the return of survival horror since 2005, I haven’t played something as true to the genre as this.
So how about that Shovel Knight? Thankfully, June wasn’t a totally dry month other than our favorite Shoveler, but it sure came pretty close. I played way fewer games this month than usual, and hopefully I can dig up a bigger selection sometime this month. But, yeah, Shovel Knight is really good everybody.
It’s Shovel Knight. I’ve said more than enough about why I love the game in my review, so I’ll keep this brief. It’s an excellent platformer that feels like it jumped straight out of the late 80’s. Shovel Knight is as smart as it is cute and funny, and brings back really fond memories of blasting through robot masters and whipping walls to find secret chickens. It’s nice to have some of that back, if only briefly.
Another blast from the past, 1001 Spikes goes out of its way to be difficult. There are traps spread through each of it’s numerous levels, and your job is to somehow navigate past all of them, Indiana Jones style. You’ll die, again and again, (maybe even 1001 times) but you’ll keep coming back. Each trap has a logic behind it, and it laughs in your face as it destroys you as you run to the exit. If you’re up for some more old school action, with a few cameos from platformer heroes of yore, 1001 Spikes is the second best retro inspired indie platformer of the month. Who would have thought?
And now for something completely different. Have you ever played a music video? Maybe. But was it metal? Not like The Virus Master. It’s a shoot-em-up set to metal, and characters even animate to the music. It’s half watching some really cool stuff happen on-screen, and half trying your best to make sure it all explodes. You’ll play through it again and again to reach the highest score and the hidden level, but it’s so satisfying you won’t mind at all.
hippochippies 