(Random) Game Recommendations
It’s a new year (or a few days prior as I type this and prepare it for new years) and completely unprompted here’s some game recommendations because I want to mention some games.
No rules really, just some random games I’ve either played for the blog or outside of the blog- heck- it’s not even all games I played this year and it’s definitely not games exclusively released this year.
The last one, for reference, was a little over a year ago on 7/29/2017 with this aiming for new years 2018 into 2019. Also I would change a few things about that due to Bamco not knowing how to stop themselves from ruining a game for microtransaction greedy money grabbing, but I digress.
Hamtaro Ham-Ham’s Unite! for the game boy color
This one is a game from my childhood that I’m so glad I completed through this blog.
If I were to sum it up I’d say it’s a game about learning hamster words and solving simple puzzles (usually making use of these words to interact with characters / the environment) to gather up Hamtaro’s friends for a meeting.
It’s too cute for its own good, it made me shout “THIS IS ON A GAME BOY COLOR” many many times because it looks too good in my opinion and is overflowing with adorable animations, and it’s just makes you feel good.
Ham-Ham’s Unite is a really relaxing and uplifting game, and it certainly left me in a better mood throughout my entire playthrough.
I hear Ham-Ham Heartbreak is even better, so I’ll be keeping that in mind the next time I want to revisit Hamtaro and friends.
Clickpocalypse 2 for android/iOS and apparently even in your browser (news to me)
Yes yes, an idle game. And one I haven’t played in months at that- but then again I haven’t played Hamtaro in a long time as well so I don’t see that as discrediting what I saw in it.
I, usually at least, just don’t enjoy phone games. Not for the bull crap “It’s not real games!” rhetoric, but because as time as gone on phone games have gone further and further from what makes a game good and instead have mostly become manipulative Skinner boxes. Even if they don’t SUCCESSFULLY drain your wallet, heck, even if they don’t have direct monetization and only use ads- they always seem to fail to balance the ‘game’ and the ‘greed’ and you’re left with no game.
You turn it on, play it for a little while, and then you realize you’re almost exclusively being used and you’re not actually getting anything out of the game.
This isn’t an incredible example of directly countering that mentality- it’s just one of a few games I’ve found in the previous years that successfully balance the other way for me at least. I’ll mention another arguably more successful- but inarguably more messy example for the next game.
The reason I mention Clickpocalypse 2 is because, well, it’s a good idle game that hit a very specific aesthetic and enjoyment for me. This is a VERY idle game, you did VERY little- you can’t even “click” to increase speed as the name might suggest. Your input is exclusively “Pick the party. Choose when to use potions or spell scrolls. Equip equipment (it’s simpler than that sounds, it auto lists the best found loot and you tap to equip). Tap to level up when you get the xp etc.
It’s really really hands off- but it felt great to me.
The aesthetic it lands on is classic RPG goodness and the party does as you’d expect, clearing out dungeons and grinding while you check in to equip and level them choosing what skills they learn.
It’s a game I enjoyed because it’s, well, a good idle game. It doesn’t bury you in “You should be tapping this non stop or else” gameplay. It carries enough enjoyable mental tricks like stronger gear and leveling up to make it fun, and the monetization is, well, the most optional thing I’ve seen in a long while.
I’ve played so many games that rely on ads and they all feel highly necessary. This has a similar idea- there are optional ads for buffs like double achievement points (used for permanent buffs across multiple adventures) or tempoary allies- and these are helpful as heck, but man.
Because this is SUCH an idle game, they honestly feel like the most optional ads around. I watched plenty because I enjoyed the game and less because I felt like I needed them in any way.
But there’s not much to say that would convince someone this is a great game. I just think it’s a good idle game for messing around on your phone. It gave me that feeling of watching a friend grind through an old FF game- a very specific feeling, but that’s what I got out of it. A chill idle with a nostalgic feel and the balance of “game” vs “phone bull crap” was tilted heavily towards the game side for me.
Buriedbornes for android
Lord that image is larger than I planned for, my mistake.
Buriedbornes was nothing but a surprise to me. I’ve played a few games I enjoyed on the phone in recent times. Idle Apocalypse and Clickpocalpyse 2 being high up there (not sure how Idle is now, but pre-beta was alright). Even fell into Dokkan for a little while. But this?
I downloaded this because I thought “Oh my god it’s trying to pretend it’s dark souls or bloodborne, what on earth is this.”
And you know what it is?
A REALLY good roguelike with traditional turn based combat!
Like a REALLY good one. It has that feature I adore in good roguelikes where things can seem impossibly difficult, but then you get a couple good drops, you tweak your character to emphasize a certain playstyle, and BOOM! You just beat the entire game in one run deep into the endless mode on a character that seems unkillable due to strategies you built from the drops you found.
And it has the foresight to tell you at a certain point “Score stops at this point so you’re just playing to collect things in your beastiary of items so you might as well stop” along with ways to end a run, though my preferred way to end a god run is to keep making deals with various demons until I end up with a curse that is guaranteed to kill me on the next boss that way I feel like I gambled to death.
Look, I know the last game might have seemed a little floaty on merits, but try this game.
It’s simply fantastic. Dive in, die, dive in, die, and then stumble onto a perma stun build or an infinite shield build or a barrier regen build- you can stumble unto so many unique ways to play and I honestly had a lot of fun breaking and being broken by this title.
Wasteland 2 for PS4/Xbone/PC/Switch
Let’s get away from phone games and handhelds in general.
Wasteland 2 is a game I was looking forward to ages before release. I remember stumbling across news of it being kickstarted or something similar- and bookmarking it for future reference and promptly forgot until I saw it in stores and started berating myself for not getting it at release.
Now it took me a long while to get around to Wasteland 2; Long enough to hear from some that it wasn’t as good as they wanted and others that it was too complicated. Long enough to build doubts.
But my god.
This is a game that I highly recommend you come in with a quick start guide of some sort. Seriously. No it’s not impossible or anything- and I’m sure fans of the original will scoff at me for saying as much- but no, really. It’s “Fallout before Fallout” except now it’s well after Fallout (obviously) releasing in 2014, and it takes that oldschool complexity seriously.
Mostly.
Basically, just read up a quickstart guide, I found a wonderful one for my purposes (pretty sure that’s the exact one I used) because character creation at the start pretty much dictates what your first impressions are gonna be- ranging from “Oh, okay, this is pretty neat, I’m hyped to dive into this” to “OH MY GOD THIS IS TERRIBLE AND EVERYONE SUCKS AT EVERYTHING AND I’M NOT A FAN”.
If your reaction is the latter, I recommend restarting and fiddling with your team composition. You can play however you like- but this is a game that kind of expects your first run to be “mostly diverse” before you attempt a less specialized team in the future.
Enough of that. Wasteland 2 is a newschool fallout game. That’s what you need to know. It’s got a ton of post apocalyptic fun, plenty of moral moments ranging in quality from “Oh heck that’s good” to “.... not good enough” but there’s a lot more good than bad.
The first half of the game is simply better put together than the second half, to be honest, due to budget and deadlines or some other dev level nonsense, but that doesn’t make the rest of the game throwaway- it just sorta simplifies towards the end and then culminates in a massive boss encounter, which isn’t terrible by any means.
Combat’s great if you enjoy oldschool fallout and want some nice squad x-com style battles. Death is scary (very scary). And, heck I don’t know, it’s just a fantastic fallout game. Like a REALLY fantastic fallout game.
I made characters I grew attached to and it felt so natural to do as much because (thanks to the quickstart guide) my team was VERY diverse so I began to associate each of them with their skills and the playstyles those skills dictated.
Seriously, with a short read on what skills do what this is a fantastic game that I’m very glad I got to play through. Oh, and if you’re on console the text is stupid small- go into the options and change that. Also, don’t do what I did which made me sad to notice- don’t type up a large Bio for your characters (at least on console) because a bug prevents the Bio box from scrolling, meaning you will forever lose access to your long backstory ;-; Don’t do that.
Wario Land: Shake It! for the Wii
God I love this game. This goes up with Hamtaro as another feel good game and in a similar way it left me feeling in a much more optimistic and generally positive mood as I finished it.
I am a huge fan of the older Wario Land titles, the first one is one of my favorite games on the game boy- but I never really kept up with Wario until recent years. I didn’t play the later games, didn’t try his mini game compilations, and didn’t look at console releases at all until much later.
I heard of this game from a Wario marathon stream setup someone was doing years ago and took note only for one fact “It’s got good graphics”.
Like that was it. I saw this and went “Pretty” so I took note to get it later on.
I had no idea it’d end up being one of my favorite games, but here we are. This game hit like a truck with quality. You can easily coast through the game if you’re struggling with the harder challenges, but my god, there are SO many challenges hidden all around for treasures. The gameplay is FANTASTIC, the motion controls are SMART (come at me) and that aesthetic! MY GOD, that aesthetic! The entire game looks like a fox kids cartoon or something similar and I adore it.
This goes down as one of those games I’d recommend to just about anyone. You have a wii, find a way to play this. Truly, one of, if not my absolute favorite platformers of all time.
Well I’m dropping this a little early because I don’t mind being off season.
12/28/2018.
There are a metric ton of games I could talk about or recommend, but I had some oddballs I wanted to say and a couple feelgood games I wanted shown as well.
Quick bonus titles would be EDF 5 (a ton of quality of life changes and it’s EDF!!! SHOOT BUGS!), Play Yakuza you dinguses, if my whole emotional sputter and that whole side blog I made didn’t give a hint- Doki Doki Literature Club is worth a play, Dragon Warrior Monsters is the best pokemon game, The Fall was very interesting and enjoyable, Nioh is Bloodborne done right, and God Hand is great.
Have a great new year, everyone~
