Wooderon Games of the Year 2018: #7

It’s Christmas Eve, by this point in the process I’d really hope that my entire list is written, wrapped and ready to go up while I sleep and recover from the busiest week in retailing. Historically though, I’d kill myself writing these and then always end up putting some portion of my best of year blogs late. We’ll see how things fair this year, because it’s so far so good.

Wooderon Games of the Year 2018: #7

Today’s number seven entry is something of a throwback for me. A game I found myself looking at for weeks and weeks before eventually saying screw it and picking it up just a couple of weeks ago. Had I played it as soon as it came out, then maybe it would have been higher, but even just 20 hours in, I adore this game and really needed to include it on my list.

Before we get to that, here’s the list as it stands thus far:

#10: Dead Cells

#9: Into the Breach

#8: Dragon Ball FighterZ

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E3 Week: My Reactions to the Square Enix Live Stream

I didn’t know what to expect going into this one. I had two predictions; one of which was that a significant portions would be taken up by Kingdom Hearts III, the other was that Final Fantasy VII was going to get delayed for another couple years. I was wrong on both counts in the end. They didn’t mention the FF remake at all.

Square Enix’s press conference wasn’t a press conference at all. Instead, they decided to go down the Nintendo route and pre-record the whole thing before peacing out. I was kind of thankful for that to be honest. that meant this whole thing could be reduced down a snappy 30 minutes, and we didn’t have to take up precious seconds on awkward almost-applause. I’m probably showing my hand slightly here, but I’m not a massive fan of Square’s games. But I’m ready to be wrong at any given moment…

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Life is Strange: How an Ending can Ruin a Game

There’s an old expression that goes “life isn’t about the destination, it’s about the journey.” A lot of narrative fiction takes this same approach. We spend most of our time watching movies or playing games, traveling towards a final goal. But the ending; it’s only the bit at the end. The real bulk of the experience comes from all the juicy bits in the middle. It’s easy for me to say that when a narrative ties up in a nice, neat little bow. But when the ending to a story throws you for such a loop that it ends up leaving a bad taste in your mouth, then I’d argue that an ending can be just as important as the 20-100 hours that came before it.

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