2014: The In A Timely Fashion Released Game Awards

Welcome to the next annual HYTIB's 'Game Awards'! You should know the rules by now, we don't actually rank all the games that came out last year, instead we just talk about any games the two of us actually played last year, old and new... which is as always a total pot luck selection rendering the whole thing pointless. And great. You'll laugh. You'll learn. You'll be a little butthurt that we only seem to play Nintendo and PC games. 

Enjoy!


Best character

Bayonetta (Bayonetta 1 & 2)

Kim Kardashian broke the internet, but how many gods has she killed?

There’s been a lot of debate as to whether Bayonetta is an out of date character designed around sleazy male gaze appeal, or something else somehow. I’m here to tell all those people who clearly haven’t played Bayonetta that they are wrongooooooooo. Yes, making needlessly sexualised characters is a trope of misogyny, but sexy and sexist are not the same thing. Bayonetta is glamorous and powerful in frankly ways that are unconventional to the usual ‘female character’ cliches, because I really don’t think they ARE targeting an exclusively male-identifying audience. Bayonetta has a large, athletic body and magic jewelry and magic glasses and magic everything and you the player runs around collecting lollipops, talking about makeup and shooting your high heels at people. That’s not even the best bit about Bayonetta either. The fact is even though she is this exaggerated pornographic power fantasy, she is also this likeable character who puts on a tough guy facade, but can’t resist helping humans and children even though she doesn’t feel she has much maternal instinct. She and her BFFs Jeanne and Rodin have their own very distinct fashion sense and style. Also she can turn into a panther wearing jewellery and that is just so sweg.

I'm not really ‘power fantasy game’ kind of person, but when it works, it just works. It’s hard not to get swept up in Bayonetta and her own flavour of marianismo. Everything about her game is dialed to 11, and she is no exception. Bayonetta starts off as a character that is quite impatient and uninvested in anything that doesn’t directly concern her. You can see her grow as a person as the game goes on, and opens up to others as she literally finds herself. It’s also hard to talk about Bayonetta without disclosing how in your face her arsenal goes. Bayonetta is not shy to strap chainsaws to her feet and uses it to move faster, while also duel-wielding flame-throwers. It’s all a bit silly, but in the best “Bayonetta is a hard dude with the biggest guns and doesn’t afraid of anything” kind of way.

Runners up: Impa (Hyrule Warriors), Faris (FFV), General Zelgius (Fire Emblem: RD)



Worst character

Lana (Hyrule Warriors)

Something something DANGER ZONE

Picture this, OK? You’re in charge of making a tribute fanservice game of a popular IP. The big draw of the product is being able to play with the characters of said popular IP, and you are tasked to compile the line-up of playable characters. If you were thinking “What about new original characters that no one knows? Can we make these them the most important characters of our story?” at any point during that explanation, you are in the right mindset that created Lana. Lana is an annoying giggling toddler whose closest ties to the Legend of Zelda series is to take up precious slots of more deserving characters. The only reason why she exists is to pander to creepy people that won’t touch a video game unless it has bubbly 13 year olds that skip around in the shortest skirts imaginable.

The thing that is weird about Lana is when her concept art first game up, fans were pretty darned sure she was going to be some interpretation of Nayru, an already canonical blue haired character who’s the occasionally incarnated goddess of water and wisdom. Instead we got an entirely new character for some reason who seems to exist mainly to balance out the cast of actually cool and non-lolita warrior women with a few token prancing teenagers in crop tops. To her credit, Lana’s weapon movesets (a spellbook that creates walls and a deku stick that summons plants and water) are really cool, but I could write you a massive list of beloved Zelda characters that they could have given those weapons to. It might i guess seem like I am being unfair to this character just because of her design and maybe she is just meant to be an innocent prancing teenage sorceress created to enable the game’s ‘original storyline’. But you gotta play the game, man. I don’t want to spoil it but she basically exists to have a super kawaii face and the story is she hella wants to bang Link. She’s not just designed for the appeal of creepers, she is one!

Runners Up: Claptrap (Borderlands 2), Random (Laxius Force)



Best Soundtrack

Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze

I'm not a huge fan of the SNES Donkey Kong games, but I did always have an appreciation of their music. They were pieces that made such good use of the hardware that I just couldn't imagine them working with any other, potentially better instrumentation. That's the bar the series had set, and through the dark aural blood sacrifices, they met that bar and then some. The game struck a perfect balance between atmospheric and catchy, while never drawing too much focus to distract you from a challenging game. This is one of those soundtracks that I expect to with the people that have played the game.


I didn’t get around to playing or even purchasing this game this year. I actually really thought Transistor was my favourite soundtrack of the year but Tobi doesn’t like it </3. Anyway, Tobi made sure to link me loads of DK:TF songs throughout the year and I gotta admit they are all really blissful and just super nice tunes. The DK franchise has had a long history of great music, particularly back when the games were developed by Rare. Those were some of the first midis I used to download on my dial up internet to listen to. There’s a fun fact for you. As I said, DK:TF is full of these great blissful atmospheric chill out songs that remind you of rainforests and perilous adventures. It kinda fits in somewhere between the soundtracks of Last of the Mohicans and Nier.

Runners Up: Transistor, Shovel Knight, Braid



Best art direction

Mario Kart 8

None of y'all have ever flown before but there's a reason I wear goggles.

When Mario Kart 8 came out, everyone was expecting.. well, Mario Kart. You’d think they were all pretty much the same game with updated graphics, new vehicles and tracks. They all follow a pretty strict formula, and yet… everyone I’ve spoken to about it declares it to be a really amazing Mario Kart sequel. I think it’s because it just feels really top quality in all aspects. The new levels are memorable, the balancing seems right, and the performance and graphics are just sublime. Everythings so shiny and vibrant and yet so clear and crisp, and they put a load of effort into the replay system to detect the best bits of a race and use a variety of camera angles so that even watching a replay of the race you just did is surprisingly entertaining.

I don’t think anyone expected them to go this far for a silly racing game. The Mario “house-style” has taken the HD jump for a while now, and thus you expect that you’ve seen what the Kart spinoff would look like. Weirdly enough, the game instead mixing up the lightning, shaders and texture quality to make it stand out from the other Mario games. You can tell effort was put into place when mustaches physics are a thing. A lot of the detail just goes by you because of the speed you’re going at, but even when coming to a stop, the game holds up. It’s not just the core game that got the royal treatment either. Even the DLC courses look went above and beyond, creating a lovely and consistent looking package.

Runners Up: South Park: The Stick of Truth, Bayonetta 2



Best Story

Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn

Ike has never heard of a patisserie.

Gotta be honest, I don’t think either of us actually played many good story-games this year. At least, not compared to the last few years, which had at least a handful of chilling indie puzzlers and tear-jerking adventures. I think Radiant Dawn was not a bad choice though. It might be pretty full of JRPG cliches but it had a lot going on, an awful lot of likeable characters (someone get me Oscar’s number pls) and you got to play on both sides of a conflict, with each character having their own loyalties and leanings which gave it a surprising depth.

When I played this, I didn’t think it was going to be to be listed in our list either, let alone out top spot. It’s not a bad story per se, just a rather weird one that is driven more by characters than by ideas. The game is a direct sequel to Path of Radiance, where a small kingdom rose up against its tyrannical oppressor and fought for its freedom. This sequel is largely about the aftermath of it all. The repercussions the war had on the civilians of the invaded nation, and their exploitation in their moment of weakness. The game ties this then into racist scapegoating, creating some World War 2 parallels. As ham-fisted as anime-racism sounds, and it is, it did turn out to be one of my more memorable elements though. It’s a surprisingly common subject in RPGs, but it is usually painted as a villainous and hateful trait, rather than an ignorant one. Radiant Dawn attempted to portray it with the nuances of ignorance and misguided objectification. It’s super uncomfortable to see a scene play out where your allies try to discuss the merits of discrimination, but it made the conclusion where everyone tries to get along feel more genuine and human, for better or for worse.

Runners Up: Final Fantasy V, Half-Minute Hero : The Second Coming



Best original game concept

Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime

Have slimes ever been so metal? Well, yes actually.

Sometimes ideas just write themselves. If you make a game about a slime (as you do), you’ll naturally have to make mechanics around shooting yourself around like flicking a rubber band. If you hit something or someone during this, they of course shoot up in the sky, and if they land on your head, you own them. If you then connect the logical dots to using this mechanic to supplying ammo to tanks and abducting your enemies through an elaborate railway system, then you end up with Rocket Slime.

Um, sure.. Yeah, it’s obvious really. When Tobi recommended this obscure DS game to me where you have real time Tank Battles I was like well, that can’t be as fun as it sounds. IT WAS THOUGH. You do a bit of simple top-down action-rpg looting around kirby-esque garden areas to collect ‘ammunition’ (yknow like apples, anvils, fire potions, etc obviously) for your tank and then you have this showdown where you and your enemy shoot all your cannons at each other and try to get them more rekt faster and then when they get rekt enough you actually have to walk across the battlefield and finish them off mano a mano. If you like fun, it would be wise to seek this game out but it’s pretty rare now so maybe just harass square enix until they make a new one. pls.

Runners Up: Recettear, Impossible Creatures, Tomodachi Life



Funniest Dialogue

Tomodachi Life

I'm sorry WHAT did you just ask me?

It’s genius really, Tomodachi Life is a sort of...  sandbox game for randomly generated soap opera drama. It’s like a cross between the sims and a tamagotchi, except the little people just talk shit to you and each other all day. Like horoscopes, a big chunk of the appeal is seeing how these random-ass statements match up to the realities of the people your Miis are based on. But it has also been made with an intentionally absurdist humour to try and push that further. You get to watch stupid dreams, local news reports, declarations of love, interventions and just neurotic musings from your friends and family. I guess in a weird way this award is a victory for computer generated humour. I welcome our new robot overlords.

I like the comparison to a horoscope, because that’s basically what it is. Semi-randomly attributed traits being applied to your custom made characters and watching it all play out like a silly soap opera. The game doesn’t contain a ton of really traditional jokes, but it’s the statements and situations your Miis get forced in that make it hilarious. The amazingly corny text-to-speech systems that read everything out are just the cherry on the cake. It basically provides all the drama and entertainment gossiping can provide, except you don’t have to feel guilty about it. 

Runners Up: LEGO City Undercover, Half-Minute Hero 2, Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright



Biggest Surprise

Hyrule Warriors

Hyrule Warriors answers the question: WHAT IF ZELDA WAS A GIRL?

I never thought I'd ever give a Dynasty Warriors game another shot, especially not after that lacklustre reveal of Hyrule Warriors. Yet here we are and I'm also putting it on my list of favourite games of the year. There's a simplistic type of joy where you can put yourself on auto-pilot and just feel time melt away around you. The game's mechanics may not have changed dramatically over the years, but they have been polished up considerably. The only real thing I was missing was an online multiplayer mode, but given by how much content was already in the game, it feels silly to complain about. They are continuously updating the game add more to it all the time too.

I never played a Dynasty Warriors game so when I heard there was a Zelda spinoff, at first I was like ‘Meh, maybe I’ll try one of those DW-type games sometime’ And then I noticed it was done by Team Ninja and I was like ‘Oh dear.. not really known for their quality or handling of beloved characters.’  As it got closer to release and I saw more info on it, I kinda got more interested as it seemed to look… strangely appealing? I did not expect a good game, but I had to know. I mean, it had gorons and the great fairy and impa looking cool as heck. Yeah turns out it’s really fun and addictive, looks and plays pretty well and has an absolute fuckton of content. The story mode might seem relatively brief (and a bit stupid) but then start getting into adventure mode and it’s a whole other game. But also the same game.

Runners Up: Don’t Starve, LEGO City Undercover, Mario Kart 8



Biggest Disappointment

Torchlight

Well it delivers on torches.

People told me this was a really awesome fun dungeon crawler game. Or at least I got that impression. And shit yeah, I love dungeon crawlers. Remember when I got really into every roguelike I've ever played? This game started out looking nice, it had pretty graphics and a sense of humour. I went into a dungeon and i started clicking enemies and then i clicked on more enemies and I made my way through a bunch of branched corridors and I realised 2 floors in I was already bored. Entertainment is a delicate thing. To the untrained eye, a lot of games seem like clicking a bunch of things to kill enemies and get loot over and over. But a good game actually has a system that works, it has to have layers of mechanics that keep you hooked and makes your choices seem meaningful. And this one just didn't seem to have any fun mechanics. I literally played it all the way to completion because it seemed so easy and I heard it was short that I figured I could tick it off my list. The absolute worst bit was the final boss battle, which spawned literally infinite units but balanced that out by killing them all a minute later… except any ones that happened to be off screen. Wha?

Cheap, simple and did what it set out to do. I wouldn’t call this a fantastic or amazing game, but I thought it was fine. I had the benefit of not having any sort of expectations or hype though. While I’ll never be a huge fan of Diablo-esque games, I had a decent time with it.

Runners Up: Altered Beast, Transistor, Wallace and Gromit Grand Adventures



Most Time Wasted

Recettear - 226 hours

Said everyone on my steam friends list, sarcastically, for like 5 months.

Recettear starts off with a game mode where you have to make a lot of money in a really short space of time, which can be kind of annoying if you don't, cause then you just have to go back in time on a grindy sim game. But after that you open it up to making money, crafting items and exploring dungeons in your own time which is super addictive. And then as you get to more advanced dungeons, they start getting suuuuuuuuuuuper long. I clocked over 200 hours and I still didn’t manage to find all the rare items in the game, and I don’t think I completed the very last dungeon even.

It should be no surprise that a solid, and fresh take on the dungeon crawling genre would result in a lot of wasted time. Collecting loot it written directly into its story, about running an item shop, tying it all together nicely. While Allie spent twice as much time on this as I did, I completely understand where all those extra hours went.

Runners Up: Minecraft, Tomodachi Life, Monster Hunter



GAME OF THE YEAR (released in 2014)

Bayonetta 2

FAGGEDABOUDIT!!

Follow-ups on some of your favourite games are always tricky. Good sequels should serve a point in the overall world, improve mechanics, yet also keep everything you loved about it before. Bayonetta 2 does all of that and then some. Playing it revealed to me just how much polish the original could have had. An absolute blast to play and a masterclass in its genre. This game almost did not get made, but I'm thrilled that it did.

I insisted on playing the first Bayonetta game first, and it’s a good thing I did because this game feels far more enjoyable and easy to pick up. On the surface it might seem like an easier game than Bayonetta, with more plentiful items, easier to read enemies and much easier challenge modes… but in truth it feels more like they’ve just rooted out all the needlessly frustrating parts and kept in the high-speed, high-demand combat making the game all-round better. The original game was known for its drama and spectacle, and this game manages to deliver more of the same while still feeling fresh and having wow factor. I loved the enemy designs, with memorable centaur-like angels making up the majority of the paradiso foes, while introducing demons of all kinds of shapes and sizes for a whole new can of worms. I was even surprised by the story, which picks up right from the first game and is very much intertwined with it, so I highly recommend playing the first game or at least watching the cutscenes if you want the ending of the second one to seem satisfying. It was kinda hard to decide this year’s GotY, apart from the fact that I don’t play a huge majority of new games, I think people generally felt there was a shortage of AAA titles that really delivered (yeah never heard that before) this year. I think I found a handful of games, particularly on WiiU that I really enjoyed, and I guess Bayonetta 2 for me was the more fresh and memorable experience of them all.

Runners Up: Hyrule Warriors, Shovel Knight, Mario Kart 8, Half-Minute Hero 2




DINOSAUR OF THE YEAR (released before 2004)

Final Fantasy V

Names That Make Allie Chuckle: The Video Game.

We already kind of discussed some of our impressions in a previous post, but it can’t hurt to summarise it again here. All in all its a pretty decent and fast-paced 16-bit adventure with likeable characters, solid mechanics and great music. While I’m usually not a fan of RPGs where I can’t get invested into the story, I could appreciate what it was doing. The entire thing felt like a saturday morning cartoon with a running story. Everyone’s a stereotype, but people still play dress willy-nilly and when the recurring villain gets blasted off into the horizon, everyone learned a thing or two about love and friendship. Also that Cara is tough as nails.

Yeah turns out most of the good games I played in this year released around 2005-2007. But of the ones that qualify, it can’t be denied that FFV is a good game. While FFIV was a big step up from the previous games (far as I know), FFV was a big step in the right direction in terms of being a more relatable and enjoyable adventure. One of the best ideas it had was having a changing class system instead of changing characters, allowing more much-needed character development while still having tons of variety for combat.

Runners Up: Devil May Cry, Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons



Craziest Amateur Game

Winnie the Pooh Home Run Derby

100 acres of cold, hard wood.

I’m going to have to resist typing this one out in all caps. Winnie the goddamn Pooh’s Stupid Home Run Derby is a deceptively simple licensed Flash game intended for children about Pooh and Baseball. All you do in the game is wait for one of the Hundred Acre Wood residents to pitch a ball at you and you just click at the right time to knock it out of the park. Sounds simple, so where’s the catch? The catch is that the difficulty curve is just a straight line up, making it just way too flippin’ hard. The pitchers get all these weird patterns that throw you off and even if you manage to hit the ball, half the time you didn’t hit it far enough or you knocked it too far to the side. It’s an exercise in frustration and it really makes you feel like you honour is on the line. 

Haha yeah, the thing that makes this game ‘crazy’ is how it became an internet sensation. This flash kids game was unexpectedly insanely difficult, and yet simple and quite possibly achievable, making it the perfect setup for some kind of viral internet tough-guy challenge. If you know where to look you can find a whole ton of memes dedicated to the mercilessness of christopher robin and the ferocious rivalry between him and Winnie the Pooh. Go ahead and try the game if you don’t believe me. We can wait. You’ll be back.

Runners Up: Laxius Force, Recettear



The SIGH DIDNT YOUR MUM TEACH YOU HOW TO DRESS award of 2014

The Prophet (Bayonetta 2)

Good thing he can fly cause he sure as hell ain't walking.

This game knows a thing or two about bold fashion choices… but this dude in particular is a nude man wearing a translucent rhombus. Bravo.

The Prophet is basically naked man wearing a jacuzzi-suit. I honestly don’t know what I’m supposed to be seeing here, but I feel like it belonged in my christmas tree. It's guys like him that continuously justify and necessitate this award category. There's always one each year.

Runners Up: Tear (Recettear), Yusha (Half Minute Hero 2), Cia (Hyrule Warriors)



Headache of the Year

Borderlands 2

Still don't know why he was called 'Handsome Jack' tbh.

Borderlands 2 is constantly loud, flashy, first person and disorganised, just like its predecessor was. All are key ingredients into ensuring that a game is out to fry my brain. It featured characters that think screaming is a substitute for humour, and sometimes it just may as well, since its sense of humour was pretty dire. Its interface design is just a mess, and crucial audio clips routinely got cut off because we were simply playing the game. However it liked to go the extra mile by making sure it was confusing too. Borderlands 2 is one of those games that can give you a map, a minimap and an objective description, and you sometimes still don’t know where to go. A good example of this was a  DLC mission where had to go to an “X marks the spot” type of dealie, and even though we were at the place the game told us to go, it still took us quite a while and a Google search or two to pull it off.

Haha yeah. FPS games are almost always a shoe-in for this award because they are headache-inducing by nature. This game manages to be that and so much more. It’s intentionally really in-your-face with obnoxious characters and scenarios. In spite of that, Tobi and I really enjoyed playing this together and stuck it out for quite a while (though it sure does stretch itself out pretty far). It’s a really solid game to play with friends if you like grinding and shooting and more grinding. I won’t judge.

Runners Up: Devil May Cry, Terraria, Doom 3



Worst Trend of the Year

‘The big problem with journalistic integrity is that sluts are everywhere except on my lap, and it makes me so angry that I’m going to hold my breath until I get a free cupcake.’

She's brought a whip! I knew it!!

Sigh. Yeah, the obligatory Gamer Gate mention. What started out as a misguided and unjustified attempt to call people out on corruption, spiralled into the 2014 oppression olympics. If we pull away all the pretense, it just boils down to roughly the same hissy fit a certain subset of gamers felt when “casual gamers” were encroaching on -their- hobby. A broader, more diverse target audience is of course a bad thing because it means less products will be directly targeting people like me, and I’m the specialest snowflake and the gravitational pull of my ego makes the universe revolve around me and my objectively best tastes.
In this instance these goons were being intimidated by “social justice warriors”, which is code for “anyone that isn’t a straight white cis male”. Occasionally they tried to connect this back to integrity in video game journalism, but any sort of point that could have been made couldn’t escape the intolerant and selfish framing they set up themselves.

‘#gamergame’ was a kinda massive internet-wide argument that kicked off because some woman on the internet who made arty farty experimental games was a bad girlfriend to somebody. Strangely, it gained so much traction and people seemed to think that it could be redeemed as a legitimate justice movement despite being actually founded on the irrational intense loathing of a small number of women who might have had sex with some men at some point. This is supported by the fact that this small number of female games developers and journalists were sent so many death (and sexual) threats that some had to be relocated, cancel jobs and project and leave social networks. There seemed to be little regard for the idea that perhaps if an industry is corrupt and exchanging professional favours for blowies, it might be at least partially the fault of the ones in a position of power looking to sell jobs for sexual favours, and not just the ones with the sweet irresistible vaginas. That of course would be worth considering if this whole ‘scandal’ wasn’t utter bollocks. 

Runners Up: ‘Ship broken game now, patch it later… maybe.’, 'Season pass: We’ll make more content as long as we don’t make too little money or too much money or can’t be arsed really.'



Dumbest premise

‘Humans are destroying nature, and we will put a stop to this by flooding the entire’ world. (Pokémon Alpha Sapphire)

WHO COULD HAVE POSSIBLY KNOWN THIS WOULD HAVE RAMIFICATIONS!?

I don’t get it. I don’t get how this could have been an idea a character would come up with, and I don’t understand the mindset of a writer either. It is 100% stupid because it completely hinges on a complete inability to connect dots that even a child could connect. What also grinds my gears is that these goons do not suffer any consequences for it either. They go AW SHUCKS MY BAD THANKS FOR CLEANING UP MY MESS BYE and then the game continues like none of it happened. To top it all off, there's a sidestory after the main game that sets up the Poké-multiverse with parallel dimensions or timelines I don't know, but it's stupid.

This certainly wasn’t the first or last time the pokemon games had a bunch of organised criminals/radicals who wanted to do something reeeeally fuckweird and glaringly hypocritical. But it’s ok because all you have to do is show up and beat up all their pets. You’d think as the strongest trainers in town, the gym leaders might be able to sort this out, but they don’t give a shit. Maybe they didn't take the idea seriously either.

Runners Up: Bayonetta, Borderlands 2, Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn



Most awkward moment

‘When Tobi rejected my romantic advances and then asks out my friend right in front of me, questions his own choices and then marries my friend the next day.’ (Tomodachi Life)

DIS BITCH RIGHT HERE

Tobi can attest that I was genuinely troubled by how this all went down. I got Tomodachi Life and made myself, Tobi, and my good buddy Leanne. Miis in this game are unsettlingly eager to shack up, but when Leanne wanted to ask out Tobi, I thought it’d be fine cause I was gonna give her some real gnarly advice. Heh heh. So Leanne awkwardly makes her move, and then TWIST, who should show up? That’s right, the rightful heir to hugs kingdom, yours truly. BAM. Choose wisely, imaginary Tobi! And then Tobi went ahead and picked Leanne. Shit. And then later, hes all ‘I wonder if I made all the right decisions with my life?’ I chuckle bitterly and take a screenshot. The next day, he wants to get married. I pretend really hard like I don't care whatever happens in this game its all random anyway and doesn't bear any sort of basis for examination of my own life. To this day, Tobi and Leanne are still happily married with like 8 depressingly adorable children.

You have to admit. Tomodachi Life knows how to create drama. 

Runners Up: Waiting literal weeks until a blood moon appears so we can finally progress, only to find out we didn’t need it at all. (Terraria)



Most terrifying moment

IT’S GETTING LATE AND YOU FORGOT TO GET WOOD FOR THE CAMP FIRE (Don’t Starve)

Often times does happen.

New category! I like to play at least one vaguely scary game each year. At Halloween, I played Bayonetta 2 which isn’t really ‘scary’, and I also played Doom 3 which kinda was reasonably scary. But you know what’s even more nerve wracking? The terrifying unknown that lurks all over the place in Don’t Starve. This game is a survival game with some good intuitive instructions and logic that allow you to enjoy figuring out what to do and what the rules/dangers are all on your own. You’ll get killed by spiders Killed by Pigmen. Killed by war hounds. Killed by vengeful spirits and weird things you found under the ground and weird things that came out of swamps! And creepiest of all? You better finish what you were doing before nightfall and build a campfire stat, because if you get caught in pitch darkness fumbling around trying to light a torch, something unknown and invisible will come and kill you no matter where you are.

It’s always something you forget. Don’t Starve is a game where you have constantly have to desperately scramble to meet your short-term goals, and while you are doing that, you are slowly losing track of other important stuff. If it’s not keeping a fire lit, it’s lacking food, shelter, or means to defend yourself from wild dogs. It all so slowly creeps up to you that you get caught off guard every time, and gives you ample time to stress out between your realisation and inevitable demise.

Runners Up: Doom 3



Deja Vu award for ballsiest ripoffs

Games from a few months ago in H-er D.

Now with 10% more grunty noises!

2014 was the year of the remaster. We had lots of remasters before, but the excuse then was that HD would be the big factor that legitimised the re-release. Nowadays we are getting remasters of games that were released only a few months ago, with another slight resolution bump. I’m not even against a re-release or a remake, but let’s call it by its name. These are not remastered releases. They are pricey late ports.

Ooh. I didn’t think we’d have anything for this category this year, as nothing really caught my eye. Especially since freemium gaming has replaced shovelware, and shameless clones have become more of a genre with too many to name. But you’re right, T. Games are sorta taking the piss with calling a PC port or a nextgen version a ‘remaster’ these days. That is if they’re not using some other lame cinema-humping terms stripped of all meaning like ‘director’s cut’ or ‘definitive edition’. What exactly did you remaster in the 6 months between this and the original game’s release? You got the graphics to look somewhere in between the existing packaged product and the footage you used to advertise it? Ballsy, I guess. Have a medal on us.



Bognor Award for Exemplary Fucking-Shit-Up-itude

‘Facing off with a 3-faced angel that grows dicks out of its mouth that have baby-faces on it, ripping knobs off and and dodging its lunging testicles like it’s no big deal. Then rocket-surfing towards the big city where people literally not only throw and kick rockets, but also drive up the side of them with bikes.’ (Bayonetta)

If you have a better description I'm happy to hear it.

Some crazy shit happened in the games I played this year. But really if Bayonetta didn’t win this award she might disembowel me with a centipede made of her own hair. Everything Bayonetta (and her body-double/BFF Jeanne) does is out of control and unnecessarily gruesome, audacious, sacrilegious, sparkly, and naked. 

We could list basically name most scenes of Bayonetta 1 or 2 here. Bayonetta embodies Bognor-i-tude so well that it could have been named after her. Bayonetta dials everything to eleven and even breaks the dials off by attempting to go further. I’m not sure if the particular highlighted instance needs a lot of explaining. 

Runners Up: Shooting catnip and anvils from tanks (Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime)

--

Congrats to all the winners this year for being games that we played. It's been a good year for being a crazy as shitballs game and turning out pretty good. And it's been a bad year for STRAIGHT CIS WHITE MEN. 

R.I.P. MEN.

2564BC - 2014

Killed by good videogames with challenging and interesting narratives and designs.

Tobi Nuzlockes: First four gyms

Badge Count: 0

Went to pick my first Pokémon from Professor Bitch. For someone that dedicated his life to Pokémon, he sure got punked pretty easily. Saved right before picking a starter so I could soft-reset until I got a girl. I alternated between all three until I finally got a dame, which ended up being my very own Torchic. The name ‘Didgeridoo’ was kindly provided to me for my new Fire type friend. After making my way up town, my other “friend” Brendan challenged me to a duel with his opposite typed creature. I’m glad I got a free potion from the Pokémart flyer-peddler, because Brendan almost smoked me with a lucky shot. The first monster I caught myself turned out to be a puny little Wurmple named ‘Spools’. She turned out not to be very capable or cool, so I’m afraid she’ll be out as soon as she reaches her final form. Luckily these things usually evolve quite quickly.

I finally confronted the first Gym Leader, Roxanne. She uses rock Pokémon, which the NPCs tell me render my starter completely useless. Not good, since Didgeridoo was my best one by quite a margin. Health was dropping fast from all my best dudes, and it turned out the only seemingly viable mon I had was the Lotad ‘Guttertrash’. She had a water move, but also couldn’t take a punch from pokémon of that level. Luckily she has a move at her disposal, Teeter Dance, that reliably confuses dudes. She kept going STOP HITTING YOURSELF to Nosepass over and over again, while also blowing bubbles up its nose. We managed to overcome the challenge with a sliver of health left, earning ourselves the Gym badge!

Badge Count: 1

Exiting the gym, a scientist was running and screaming that Devon was robbed. All of it?! Either way I go a little bit east of town to a cave. Here I find the robber and molleywhop his pets until he gives his loot back. I take personally take it back to the president of Devon, who gives me a miniature TV. I quickly figured out that nothing good is ever on, so I won’t be turning it back on any time soon. For some reason he didn’t want to keep the stolen loot and asked me to give it to someone else. The president also told me take a boat to an island town to meet with that person. I don’t question it and do what he says. On my way to the boat, I talk to someone that gives me a watering can. May not sound like much, but it appears that watering berries greatly improves the amount of berries you can pick up again. While I’ll probably break this oath out of forgetfulness or laziness, I am going to try and water every berry I plant.

A sea trip later I found myself on the aforementioned island. It’s quite small and doesn’t appear to have a lot going for it. I enter the gym, which appears to be dilapidated. Lights barely seem to function, unless you stand on a giant button on the floor. I don’t know who designed this place, but I prey (s)he sought another profession after this project. I make my way through the gym and sports equipment in the dark and end up in a room with the gym leader. His name is Brawly, which is a stupid name for a person. I bet it’s not his real name. Having Didgiridoo on me, who is a burd, I smoked his fighting type monsters effortlessly.

Badge Count: 2

I go up north of town and find a cave. The cave leads to cavern that had a giant mural of a Pokémon. Steven, the person the president wanted me to meet, was there, looking at the mural. I don’t think it was anything special though. It’s a cave painting of the Pokémon from the box art. The box art also had the Pokémon in full colour and with better detail. Steven is clearly easily impressed. He does compliment me that I’ve got the potential to be the best there ever was, which also ties into him being easily impressed. I’m aiming for mediocrity, booo-i. He also tells me to deliver the stolen good to yet ANOTHER person. When he bails, I do as well.

Taking the boat back, the captain tells me he we can go to another place, and I accept his offer. We end up on a beach with the angriest people. Everyone is looking for a fight. Tired of fighting, I go hide in a bar on the beach, but the owner tells me that I should beat everyone up for his entertainment. I can do that, and I will do that. He ended up giving me something, but I don’t remember what. Probably not super important. I move on north into town. I figured out where the person I need to meet works, but he’s not at his job. Figured that this wouldn’t be straightforward either. I ended up finding him in the museum that was being plundered by Team Aqua. Since those guys are incompetent, I easily disposed of them. Their leader went on a silly I COULD TOTES KICK YOUR ASS BUT IM NOT WEARING MY ASS-KICKING SOCKS TODAY SO YOU ARE LUCKY *bails with tail between legs* spree, but I didn’t care.

On another side of the town I met a Pokémon contest idol, who made me her protegé. I entered the COOLNESS contest with my Tailow ‘Redbobs’. Redbobs has nothing but Cool-type moves, so I absolutely smoked the competition. As my reward, I got a Pikachu in a tacky dress. Speaking of tacky dresses, somehow along the way I got one forced onto me as well. Not just that, but apparently I made a non-verbal agreement to always wear the thing whenever I enter a contest. The lesson from this story is that I probably won’t be entering any more contests.

I left town and stopped by the TRICK HOUSE. Sounding completely awesome, I of course entered it straight away. Turns out that the Trick House was just a house with a hedge maze inside. Not the tricks I was thinking of, and frankly it wasn’t very tricky either. Perhaps it came closest to Prince Tricky from Star Fox Adventures, as he was an annoying waste of my time too. I left that place asap and stumbled on my bro Brendan. He challenged me to a fight, which he really should not have done. I was Super Effective-ing his face off like there was no tomorrow. That boy can consider himself lucky he isn’t doing a Nuzlocke run, because I made a vow to annihilate every single one of his pets.

Speaking of insufferable candy-asses that need my destructive intervention, when I entered Mauville I saw Wally again. I didn’t mention Wally earlier, but Wally and I go way back. Back before I was the badass that you see before you today, I had zero badges and wandered in my dad’s gym. Wally was there and begged for a Pokémon to my dad. The lazy jerk saddled me with that job and I had to babysit him getting a Ralts. He apparently moved to Mauville, and he’s still the same crybaby loser he was back home. I got asked if I wanted to fight him, and I don’t know what caught me off guard more. The audacity to challenge ME to a fight when he knows he’s out of his league, or the fact that he asked and gave me a choice. A real trainer would have looked me straight in the eye and told me that we were going to tango whether I liked it or not. I really wanted to shut his ass down and not give him the time of day, but I guess I liked the prospect of crushing him and feasting on his tears more. Naturally I let Didgeridoo incinerate his feeble Ralts and he seemed to be really depressed about it. Here’s to hoping he gives up his dream of becoming a trainer. Since I’m right in front of the gym, I may as well tackle it as well. I don’t even need to heal my Pokémon up again, because Wally is such a bad, pathetic excuse of a trainer.

My lombre Guttertrash is most suited for an Electricity gym. She’s mixed race (Water/Grass), carrying both the strength and weakness of the gym with her. The perks of being the highest level mon in capable hands is that you can rise above types like that. If I needed any help, Didgeridoo was ready to double kick her way through the scraps.

Badge Count: 3

I’m afraid the first casualty was made today. I’d like to ask for a moment of silence for dear old Cloneasaurus the Plusle. He did not survive old trusted 'put a mofo in front and change it out in your first turn to a better one so they can share experience' technique. There are more dignified ways than to perish to a Zubat, so Cloneasaurus and I were probably not meant to be anyway.

Then a long pile of nothing happened. I got a sack to put soot in and I met an IT lady who made my Pokémon Storage System or whatever. Nothing eventful for hours basically. Ultimately I arrived at a cave where Team Aqua kidnapped Mr Science because he had a piece of meteor on him. I showed them who’s boss. Those rascals then made their way up a volcano and I chased them there, and claimed that meteorite for my own. For future reference, here is the summary of every Team Aqua battle in the future: the same zillion bats and dogs over and over again and no one is having a good time.

I finally drudge my way to the next city where an old lady shoves a Pokémon egg in my hands. You may think this is super cool, but to me this is just a massive pain in the arse. This means that I’ll lose a valuable slot in my party, because the egg can’t be put in my bag next to my keys, soot and cellphone. Even worse is that there may be a male Pokémon inside that egg, making this a completely worthless endeavour.

Luckily this town does have a hot springs gym. The gymmick (heh) is that slow geysers push you up and down floors. Guttertrash knows some water moves by now, so a fire type gym is laughable at this point. I clean up as fast as the stupid geysers let me, and I earn a badge and some goggles.

Badge Count: 4

Top 10 Terrible Games That We Like

Here’s 10 games that we really can’t recommend to anyone, yet we just… secretly love ‘em. Maybe it’s nostalgia, maybe its just got some addictive elements, maybe it’s so bad it makes us laugh. Our guilty pleasures. Don’t judge us.

Allie

10. Golden Axe
I really liked playing this game with my brother as a kid. You walked left to right, you tried to punch things, you got your ass beat, but there were skellingtons. I look back on it now, and yeah, it kinda wasn’t great.

Before Star Wars Kid there was Tyris Flare.

Don’t expect any support from me on this one. Out of your entire list, this is definitely the dullest of the bunch to me. I can’t even tell you if there’s anything particularly wrong with it. It simply exists and it has memorable no defining features. It sure did have skellingtons though.

09. Warioware Inc: Mega Party Game$
Not to be confused with the original GBA version Warioware Inc. Mega Microgame$ which is of course a diamond of a game, this cheapskate gamecube port offered hardly anything new, except a couple gimmicky multiplayer modes tacked on, and without even a straight up 2-player version of classic warioware! But the thing is, it has just a couple multiplayer modes that I STILL play with my friends every single year. When we run out of juice on all our other games, this one is still here.

 It's not the fall that gets you, it's that those turtles gon be piiiissed.

Never played this one, though I have played the GBA original. It’s hard to put a value on party games, because they can so easily be a hit as they can be a miss. Personally I can’t say I'm into the series all that much.

08. Pokemon Snap
This game is about an hour long, and you just photograph pokemon. But I really liked pokemon, and you could throw shit at them and piss them off and that is PRETTY GREAT.

 Haters gonna hate

Aww yee dawg. Pokémon Snap is a horribly disappointing, on-rails game that is totally not what you hope it would be. Taking pictures is not for everyone, but the niche that IS into that would be pumped by the concept. It’s the roller coaster rails that ruins it for most people, since it means you can’t take your time and line up the perfect shot. What should be a nice relaxing time-wasted quickly becomes a stressful time management game.

07. Oddballz
This I believe was a total bomba spinoff to the groundbreaking ‘Petz’ franchise (before Ubisoft turned them into true shovelware!) Where instead of breeding cute kittens and making them wear hats, you had a bunch of fuzzy Cronenbergs that constantly made weird noises and ate live worms and would have allergic reactions (I am not kidding) to toys and food. You can probably see why I loved it.

 How do you have ideas when you don't even have a cranium?

Kind of amazed that someone could make an uglier version of Tamagotchi. That stuff had 2-bit graphics and the resolution of a postage stamp. Knowing your fondness for weird monsters, I do understand what attracted you to it though.

06. Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life
AWL is faaaar from the worst Harvest Moon game, which is kind of a depressing thought. This game promised to be a real ultimate Harvest Moon 3D next-gen experience to live out your whimsical second life. What we got instead was a small herb garden next to an unfinished-feeling town and meadow with frankly a really weird vibe about it. And the end goal of the game wasn’t so much to get all the unlocks and have heaps of cash, no the game ends when you die of old age. Wow, Right? While this game would LITERALLY put me to sleep, I kind of really like it. Note the ‘weird vibe’, the unnecessary theme of mortality and even though it was unfinished, it was addictively serene. I guess it really was that relaxing second life after all.

  Whore.

Never played this one too much. Harvest Moon games tend to be rather samey, so you pick one you like and stick with it I guess. This one has a bad rep for coming right after very polished and feature-rich entries. Compromises were made in this one to make it all pretty I think, which I guess it mostly succeeded at.

05. Ken’s Labyrinth 
Of all the Doom-alikes to choose from that could easily be argued are some pretty gnarly games, Ken’s Labyrinth by Ken Silverman is probably the least.. great. The best description I could think of would probably be ‘Wolfenstein on acid’. You have to rescue your dog, and if it dies I guess you are fucked. I guess I’m a sucker for doom-alikes though.

 What really happens when you give chocolate to dogs.

This game will always feel like a ROM hack to me. It plays identically to the game it was ripping off and it looks absolutely terrible.

04. Space Station Silicon Valley
This game was brutally unfair and had nasty as heck controls. It’s a 3d platformer from the N64 generation, which is already like… just the worst combination of things. But the premise… you’re a microchip that controls any animal you can jump into, and all the animals have their own special abilities like floating, biting, swimming, laying mines, rocket jets… oh right did I mention they are cyborg animals? Yeah I don’t know. As you can imagine, the goofy premise is the games entire appeal, it’s buggy as all fuck and like I said it’s insanely hard in all the wrong ways.

 Artists: Just fuck it, ya know?

This game seems like it just oozes potential. Potential that still feels untapped. Considering these developers went on to become one of the biggest names in video game studios, I think they could totally do it justice nowadays.

03. Creatures 3
Another pet simulator, but this time it's kind of like got an advanced genetics angle and you have to educate your creatures, make them breed and teach them not to eat poison and defend them from getting bitchslapped to death by grendels. I was never really precocious enough to get into measuring hormone levels and brain maps, but the game had a cult following in germany, and a pretty good mod scene where I could get candy cane vending machines and cages to put the grendels in. I guess what it really was was an inexpensive doll house with AI.

 Not sure I can even explain what's going on here.

You and your weird monster tamagotchis, Allie…

02. Sonic R
CAN YOU FEEL THE SUNSHINE? DOES IT BRIGHTEN UP YOUR DAY? DON’T YOU FEEL THAT SOMETIMES YOU JUST NEED TO RUN AWAY? REACH OUT FOR THE SUNSHINE FORGET ABOUT THE RAIN! JUST THINK ABOUT THE GOOD TIMES, AND THEN THEY’LL COME BACK AGAIIIINNNNNNNN!!

 GOTTA GO FAST BUT AT 15FPS

To this day I still can’t believe you aren’t trolling me with this game. It’s irredeemably bad and I just don’t understand how it can bring you such joy. It’s a racing game where everyone is on foot, but they control like lorries on ice.

01. Chrono Cross
Chrono Cross is so goddamn beautiful, moving, breathtaking, unforgettable, magical aaaand I can’t recommend this game to anyone. The main reason is that it doesn’t tell you where the fuck to go at any point in the game and it literally expects you to just decide to backtrack through a dungeon you just beat and use an item you may have got from some npc in town, or discover an invisible thing on the overworld map. It’s got like 30 totally inspired playable characters for you to not figure out how to recruit, and an epic emotional story that goes completely off the rails about ⅔ of the way through and just has way too many ideas without any sort of satisfying conclusion. Infact, if you are able to follow it at all you deserve a medal. But that soundtrack is the shiz.

 I'm so stuck I'll just drown myself.

I totally feel you with this one. It’s kind of hard for me to admit this is not a good game, because in my eyes it is. It’s easy to get blinded by all the things it does right to notice all the bad decisions it makes along the way. It’s nonsensical, slightly pointless, but it sure is beautiful and inspiring.


Tobi
10. Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure
Remember a time when the Wii Remote was new and developers were still messing around with what they could do with it? While most of them bailed, some of them released those games with mixed successes. Zack & Wiki is one of those games centred around Motion Control implementations akin to a Wario Ware, except they didn’t figure out yet at the time that individuals do the same gestures differently. This ended up making a motion controlled puzzle game that just simply did not work for a lot of folks, and you had to resort to guides to see how you had to perform the same gestures you were making all your life. To make things worse, it’s also one of those adventure games where you can mess up and have to restart. I really like a lot of what they were going for but… yeah.

 Brr! Cold enough to freeze the balls off a br- oh, sorry man.

I can’t really vouch for the quality of this game, I saw it looking pretty interesting on the release but I never picked it up. I think people I know got fed up with it pretty fast and felt it was short and shallow. I’m actually not sure what it is you like about this game, but I imagine it’s got pretty decent puzzles and it’s kind of a cute little adventure.

09. Pandora’s Tower
I’m one of those people that thinks Konami never really made a 3D Castlevania game yet. Well if Konami wasn’t going to do it, Gambarion will. Featuring a cast with the charisma of a vending machine, heavy use of motion controls and IR cursors, you can guess where this one went wrong. Polish was pretty much absent from every single aspect as well. They wanted to make a game that was simply way beyond their means and talent. As someone that really wanted an actual 3D Castlevania, this game just had its heart in the right place.

 I'll break up with her after one more dungeon...

I really liked this game as well. This game doesn’t even really have an fatal flaws and it has some charm, but somehow I know in my heart that it’s not a great game that most people would turn their nose up at it and for good reason. Well, ok I know some pretty good reasons. Wiimote action combat, those haircuts, and that cringeworthy moe housewaifu the game centers around. ITS SO CRAY THOUGH NOBODY ELSE UNDERSTANDS US, T.

08. Metroid Other M
Trying to correct the lame first person course the Metroid series took on the Gamecube, the series creator decided to bring the series back to where he left off. Following the style of Metroid Fusion, Samus is back to being the awesome speedy and agile cyborg ninja we used to know… in gameplay. In a bold move, they decided to finally fill in the blanks of her personality, and boooooy howdy the personality they chose could not be more different from what the audience imagined all this time. Samus seems socially stunted, fragile, easily swayed by authority figures and WHINY. What they intended to be a big emotional moment in the series ended up being a slap in the face to a lot of fans. For god knows what reason they made the game more linear than ever, and expected you to play a 3D game like an NES game. Icing on the cake is that this title had the pixel-huntiest pixel hunts that would make Sierra games blush in embarrassment. I still liked how Samus played though, which felt pretty badass and faithful to the character.

 A little past its......... prime ;-]

Yeah I guess what this game had going for it was it actually works out as a pretty not bad 3d interpretation of the original games, as opposed to Metroid Prime being more like a straight up FPS spinoff (even if it was the absolute shiz niz). This game had so many really frustrating little bad design decisions though that it wasn’t just the awkwardly misogynistic cutscenes that put me off. I can see why you’d consider it slightly underrated, but I definitely like this game less than you do.

07. Freddi Fish 3: The Case of the Stolen Conch Shell
This is an adventure game series for children age 3-8. I was not 3-8 when I first played this and I’m still not. It’s a point and click game where most of your interaction with the screen amounts to what is basically virtual keys dangling in front of your face. You are tasked to find who stole the conch shell, and free your wrongfully imprisoned uncle. There’s multiple endings to this one, where the clues you find are different each time, resulting in a different culprit. I got all the endings.

 Predators of the sea.

I can only guess these games are whack as fuck for them to have this weird cult following. I will have to play these games one day. That said, Tobi does just like things for babies like Blue’s Clues and vegetable puree, so who knows.

06. Disaster: Day of Crisis
Disaster is a game based on action movie clichés and Roland Emmerich disaster flicks. Every large scale thing that can go wrong in the world does, at the same time. Earthquakes ripping open roads, tsunamis flooding everything, fires breaking out, gas leaks infesting caved in tunnels, wild animals escaping,... the whole works. They made a game around all these things that were quite popular at one point. I’m not sure if they had a good idea on how to mix all these elements though, because the gameplay keeps changing constantly and does a really bad job of explaining stuff to you. It’s the total lack of polish or cohesion that really makes this one a hard sell. It’s its unpredictability, unintentional camp and ability to systemise the strangest things that makes me love it though.

 Grizzlys are known to hunt salmon and excessive HUD elements.

I won’t lie, this game sounds amazing. I’m actually kind of sad that I hadn’t heard of it until recently.

05. ActRaiser
Ever wanted a game that combined fast-paced, and difficult action gameplay with slow Sim City building? No? Well here it is anyway. ActRaiser is a game with an identity crisis that tried to turn religion into exciting video game mechanics. You sometimes play as an avatar of the lord that purges the lands of false-gods with your sword, and sometimes an angel trying to help your followers expand and spread your influence across the region. Neither of the two different styles of gameplay are particularly well-thought out, or well-done. I still give them points for originality though. Most of the game’s problems would easily be fixed had they had more time, or perhaps in a sequel. Going by the fact that it’s a launch title for the Super Nintendo gives me a sneaking suspicion it was simply rushed out the door.

 When u accidentally spawn in hell and erryone laugh at u

I think the sim/strategy angle of this game is its strong point, as a platformer though its one of.. thoooooooose platformer games. One of those ‘find the exploitable corner where the boss can’t hit you thats probably the only way to beat this game’ games. See also: Altered Beast. That was almost on my list actually! But turns out I don’t like it that much.

04. Winnie The Pooh Home Run Derby
OK here my out, guys. I know fully well this is a shitty throwaway browser game. It’s completely free because no one would pay for it. It simply exists because someone was all HEY MAKE A GAME STARRING WINNIE THE POOH. HAVE IT DONE BY FRIDAY. All you do in this game is click at the right time to swing the bat. If you hit enough home runs, you proceed to the next challenger. Completely fine for the first few, but the difficulty climbs up so dramatically. No human child could do this. I consider myself to be far superior to any stupid kid, so when a kids game absolutely crushed me in the most humiliating fashion, I had to restore my manly honour by getting even and beating it. I never did. Looking up the correct title brought me straight to the game again, and I must admit I am struggling to not give it another go.

 Seriously just you goddamn wait till you get to tigger.

If you don’t know about this game’s reputation, its really worth looking it up. Actually hilarious. I’d love to watch you try and beat the game. I hate baseball games though and I think it looks like a tedious fuckin browser game, but you go girl.

03. NieR
NieR is a gnarly looking game about a gnarly looking dude that plays like he’s swatting flies on rollerskates. The game’s quite obviously low budget, and once you get into its plot and subject material you’ll immediately see why. NieR was destined to be sales chart poison, as its sole reason of existence is to depress the living hell out of the player. Having become too old and ugly to still prostitute himself, the titular NieR becomes increasingly frustrated and desperate to pay for his dying daughter’s medical needs. You drudge through boring and frustrating gameplay to see just how much sadder it can get. Even thinking back to it bums me out. In order to fully beat the game, you are expect to not only beat the game three times, but also 100% complete all its nonsense side quests. The pay-off is about the biggest middle finger you can get. I found myself strangely compelled by its quest to make me sad though, and ultimately I got one of my more memorable gaming experiences by sticking with it to the end.

 Starring Gary Busey as the Witcher.

I feel ya. Your description actually sounds a bit like 9hours9persons9doors, but that game was actually awesome. I guess cool ideas can be ruined by horribly flawed gameplay though. Still, sounds like it was worthwhile.

02. Soul Blazer
If I had to describe Soul Blazer is one word, it would be “basic”. I don’t mean basic in the sense that it does what every other game at the time was doing. No, it’s basic in the sense that it sort of did what much older other games were doing, but somehow simpler and worse. Dialogue reads like it was written in a fortune cookie factory and it’s pretty heavy on backtracking for a relatively short game. The gameplay mostly consists of finding certain spots on a map where monsters spawn from, standing still there and mashing the button until they all die. Doing so makes an unimportant rando, building or plant appear that don’t really do anything. Grinding to unlock a single flower is one of the most bizarre form of rewards and progression I’ve seen in ages, but I must admit that I fell for its charm.

 Well this guy knows something I don't

I think really this is kind of a decent enough game, but it does sorta have the look and feel of some sorta amateur RPGmaker type game. Mechanically though, it’s a little more original than that. Kind of a bit similar in its appeal to ActRaiser actually, but.. better than ActRaiser I reckon because it wasn’t SHITTY PLATFORMING.

01. Deadly Premonition
I’ll not mince words. Deadly Premonition is a freeaboo* video game rip-off of Twin Peaks. It just straight up lifted the bulk of Twin Peaks’ ideas and characters, and tried to pass it off as their own. These guys were clearly in way over their heads when they wanted to make an open world game, because they did not have the time, money, experience or even a vague clue on how modern games worked. Cutscenes feature some atrocious terribad Troll 2 level writing and acting, and the actual production behind it is just as bad. Animations look uncomfortably unnatural and place holders are still all over the place. Everything feels like it could break apart any second, but it miraculously never does. It’s a game whose gameplay is so bafflingly poor that you’ll want to crank down the difficulty as low as possible so you have to play it the least. The worst thing is that the creators are clearly unaware of how bad they did, and in fact seemed incredibly proud. In a sick and twisted way, I kind of do think they can be proud. I couldn’t look away from this train-wreck and was able to see through all the disaster. What’s there is indescribable and life-affirming.

(*Freeaboo: Someone who is obsessed with America/American Culture/Cartoons/Food/.. etc. and attempts to act as if they were American. Derived from the similar word “Weeaboo”.)

 I'm no fuddy-duddy, Zach. I can bust a rhyme or two.

Yeah this is sort of an obvious pick really, its the ultimate so-bad-its-good perfect Let's Play fodder from a time before Let’s Plays. I kind of already associate you with this game since you told me about it. I feel like it’s hard to tease you about any of these picks, they’re kind of widely accepted as flawed but much appreciated cult classics. I look forward to playing this myself some day and seeing how much I can even.

So that’s 20 whole games that we just can’t recommend to you. On behalf of HYTIB we accept no responsibility for you trying to play these games, and realising they may in fact be awful games because we warned you. Some people just like the taste of a sinner's sandwich.