Last year I did this thing where I went through Raptr and picked out all the games that I was able to achieve an “Experienced” rating on, then reviewed them. Well, if you hadn’t guessed, I’m going to do that again. Foreshadowing!

This year rounded out to an even 25 games that I got as far in. I’m not sure that means that I’ve been gaming less so much as it means I’ve been playing games that are tried and true more often. League of Legends, Smite, Warframe, those are the main ones that I play with my friends, so there’s been less time to get arbitrary scores in games that I’ll be doing half-assed reviews on eventually. Last year I did 3 posts covering 10 games each, so this year I’m going to stretch it out a bit to 5 posts covering 5 games each. Starting with the most recent 5 games, right after the dinosaur.

Rawr! It’s a dinosaur!

1. Path of Exile – I guess getting the experienced tag in most games takes about 4 hours, but I feel like I barely scratched the surface with PoE. It’s a 2d isometric Diablo-clone with a very impressive, albeit intimidating and grindy, leveling system. I played about three days worth of it and cleared the first map to little fanfare. There’s really no discernible story that early in the game, but I had given up on it. Turn off the chat, the multiplayer town areas are really spammy.
2. State of Decay – I actually ran into this game through one of my less hardcore IRL friends. Caught him playing with it and I found it terrible and amusing. It’s an open world, single-player, zombie survival action game… thing. I’m pretty sure most of the survivors are randomly generated, and there’s very little in the way of story besides staying alive. It’s fun though, not terribly hardcore for a zombie survival game, and it does things depending on the state you left your survivors in after you log off. Good buy.
3. The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing – Another isometric dungeon crawler, but this one reminds me more of Torchlight that D2. Quite a bit more polished, a skill system that’s manageable, and a much better storyline. Comparing it to other dungeon crawlers, it actually has one of the better storylines I’ve played in a while, even if it is very straightforward. I didn’t actually beat it however, and it seems to tout replayability as a thing, so it failed me on that front. May revisit eventually, worth the sale price.
4. Papers, Please – There’s been quite the slew of pixel art games released this year, and they’re a guilty pleasure of mine. The gameplay in this is one of mental acuity in finding errors among increasingly difficult paperwork, rules, and regulations, on pain of execution. Sounds exciting, right? Well, I think my stats are a little padded, because I fell asleep playing it twice. Riveting!
5. Star Conflict – This is SO CLOSE to a decent space-based dogfight simulation. Unfortunately it’s F2P, which means that a vast majority of the game is based in perpetual grind. The mechanics aren’t bad at all, however there was a sore lack of gameplay modes and not much continuity between matches besides slowly unlocking additional ships. I nearly had a couple friends playing it with me, but they moved on, and so did I. Worth every non-existent penny. Coulda been a contender for awesome spaceship game.

Honorable Mention

• Rogue Legacy – Currently playing this excellent indie game with a controller. It’s a roguelike platformer that randomly gives you descendants of your previous hero. You grow perpetually stronger each generation as you’re able to clear more and more of the 4 areas in the castle before fighting the final boss. Currently I have one boss down. This would probably have made it on the 2014 list if I had purchased it a few weeks later. Worth full price, imo.