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AM2R – Games of 2016
Whenever I go down the rabbit hole of Metroid fanboy self pity, I inevitably lament the lost genius of Metroid II, a game that should have never worked on the Game Boy and ended up working so well that it deserved a more powerful home. I wasn’t the only one who realized that the vision…
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Stardew Valley – Games of 2016
Growing up I was friends with a lot of farm kids, but somehow I avoided working on the farm myself. It always looked like hard and repetitive work with very little daily gratification. You know, the kind of work that wouldn’t make for a fun video game. That’s why it took a lot of convincing…
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Virginia – Games of 2016
I knew as soon as I saw the trailer that I was going to play Virginia. Something in the press about “a very X-Files meets Twin Peaks vibe,” and I’m interested. Go ahead and throw in a ‘narrator’ who was almost immediately recognizable as unreliable (my favorite kind), a MILD SPOILER AHEAD case of the…
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No Man’s Sky – Games of 2016
Unforgettable. What a ride. What a legacy. No Man’s Sky delivered on its promises. I can’t think of a new franchise that has generated this type of passion from its players. It’s all true, but I’m done being cute here. There was a small amount of time where I enjoyed No Man’s Sky in a…
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Mafia III – Games of 2016
Mafia III is a bit of a departure from its predecessors in that you don’t actually play for the Mob. It’s a personal revenge story, one in which a young and slightly gruff African-American man named Lincoln Clay strikes back against some criminal big-shots in the Mardi Gras town of New Bordeaux. Lincoln isn’t dealing…
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XCOM 2 – Games of 2016
The last thing I’d ever want to do when being occupied by a superior alien race is to get up close and personal with them. We’re outnumbered and out-teched so we have outsmart them. I’m not saying I outsmarted any of them, but that didn’t make killing aliens with swords any less satisfying when it…
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Titanfall 2 – Games of 2016
I am not a FPS multiplayer fan, really. While I did play a little multiplayer with some of the Horrible Night crew, my experience with this game rests almost entirely with the single player campaign, and what a single player campaign it is. There is a little bit of a ramp up as far as…
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The Witness – Games of 2016
One of my first non-electronic game memories is sitting on the beach working through word searches. I don’t even think I could read, but I sure could circle things when someone pointed to them. Maybe that’s why The Witness started out feeling like a nice vacation. An island full of puzzles is about as much…
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Orwell – Games of 2016
Orwell is at least as scary as its dystopian inspiration and that’s without rats. I missed 2013’s Papers, Please, but Orwell apparently shares the premise while doing away with any of the whimsy or charm. Utilizing a system that uses a terror event to justify digging into a web of interconnected people’s private lives through…
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Devil Daggers – Games of 2016
Never stop running. I hadn’t woken up that gaming skill in years. I didn’t know how important it would be to my favorite gaming moments in 2016. The game that woke it up couldn’t have been more unassuming. One look at Devil Daggers and I see my shooter roots with all kinds of Quake flashbacks.…