Thanksgaming II

Not to be confused with my reviews announcement here.

For those who don't know, and just want the cliffnotes, I came up with the concept for my blog last year and extended it to anybody who wanted to talk about their most beloved games. To games of their childhood, games they're playing now, and games they're happy are still in development and didn't become vaporware. So, I'm continuing the tradition this year.

If I listed every game I'm thankful for we'd be here all day, so I'll just name the first one that comes to mind: The Walking Dead. I love this game, the story, and the characters. It's the most emotionally invested I've been in a game for a long time coming and is right up there with Metal Gear Solid and The Last of Us in term of quality, in my mind. I got to play both games and love them to pieces. It introduced me to Telltale, and The Walking Dead franchise, which I finally got around to streaming on Netflix a couple of days ago.

Your turn.

Most recently I am thankful the developers of Alien Isolation got to make the game they set out to make. Because for my money they knocked it out of the park. There's a few split opinions and minor gripes but overall everyone agrees its pretty awesome. May not be for everyone but it was absolutely for me

Outside of that I'd say Kickstarter is my super thankful dream come true. Divinity and Wasteland give me such immense satisfaction that my most nostalgic game styles still hold up these days. And there are still more on the way. Super awesome fantastic

Call of Duty has been one of the staples of my gaming habit for a long time but the last three games have struggled to meaningfully iterate on the series. I think Activision realized the two-year dev cycle wasn't enough and I have to salute them for moving away from the model. It's very much paid off with Advanced Warfare, as arguably the most technically impressive next-gen game out right now. The revamped movement and all of the insane options at your disposal have really pushed things forward. I'm actually a big fan of Sledgehammer games, as they made both Dead Space and From Russia with Love, the latter of which was a very fun and fluid TPS with Sean Connery's voice talent.

If I were to pick a single title, it would probably be Mega Man 9. There may be other titles that have had a bigger impact on me, titles I've played more, and titles I've discussed more, but, even so, I don't know there are many I appreciate quite as much, mostly due to when MM9 was released and how well it was made.

First of all, I'm a huge Mega Man fan, and the franchise has been in rocky territory since the later half of the X series, with Mega Man 8 in particular leaving a rather bitter flavor, somewhat alleviated by Rockman and Forte, to the end of the original series. Second, at the time MM9 came out there weren't many other noteworthy 2D platformers, likely my favorite genre, on the horizon, and, beyond that, there weren't even many games I CARED about coming out; people were going nuts about Gears of War 2, Army of Two, and Mirror's Edge, and I just sat back, waiting for a title to give even half a damn about. Combined, these two factors made Mega Man 9 EASILY my most anticipated game in years, even while I was harboring low expectations for the title.

Then it came out, and, to my surprise, Inti Creates knocked the ball out of the park with the game, creating my far and away favorite entry in the entire franchise, barring perhaps X2. The stage difficulty was PERFECT, with a great balance of semi-tricky platforming and enemy placement that were never frustrating (Gate stages in X6 were particularly notorious for this) nor mind-numbingly trivial (Like almost every stage in MM5).

The boss fights were all pretty great too, especially if you are like me and insist on buster-dueling all of them, since they (almost) all deal fairly reasonable damage and have patterns/habits that are easy to learn and fun to play around, barring Plug who can be pretty nuts sometimes.

Additionally, on top of being enjoyable fights, MM9 bosses ended up handing out my favorite selection of weapons in the series, with most providing some form of secondary utility to the player. Bees collected items, Black Holes ate enemy fire, Tornados let you jump higher and activated a few platforms, Tridents penetrated shields, Concrete made blocks, and Plugs followed terrain. This is especially appealing since it caters to how I play MM games far more than most previous installments do, since I don't care about exploiting boss weaknesses. Traditionally speaking, this means one of two things when I play a MM game: I either progress stages left-to-right, top-to-bottom, or, in the case of the X series, I try to finish stages in the most efficient order. MM9 is one of the few games where I break this mold and progress in a particular order specifically to get certain weapons to use during other stages. For instance, I almost always start on Tornado's stage just for the screen clearing capability his weapon gives, and I always rock the Black Hole Bomb for Hornet's stage. Other games in the series offer some of this utility, but none before 9 offer near the same amount.

Then there's the music, ohhhhhhhh, the music. While other games may have had tracks that I like more than anything in this game, Quick and Dive coming immediately to mind, the overall OST is easily my favorite in the franchise and one of the few game OSTs I make sure is on all of my devices.

Oh, and speaking of great music, THE WILY MACHINE IN THIS GAME IS A (SPOILER)GIANT, EGG BARFING, FIRE BREATHING DINOSAUR! IT'S AWESOME!
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I never thought they'd top the spiked-chin-pogo-walker-head-thing from MM7, BUT THEY DID IT! :hyper: (I still love you though, pogo-walker-thing)

Seriously, this game made my life complete and I don't have enough good things to say about it, and if I were to offer thanks this season to just one company for one project, it would be Inti Creates for MM9. I <3 u Inti Creates (even if you were part of MM10 as well). o3o

I thankful for DayZ Mod. It's been a blast playing it and because of it I have the standalone version of the game now a good amount into alpha. I really don't foresee myself playing much else once things really get rolling here in the next couple months with the survival aspects. It's everything I've ever wanted in a game: Zombies, Realism, Survival, meaningful death and LOTS of scavenging. There is no game that can give me the adrenaline rush it does. My hands will literately be shaking after firefights and you never know when someone is watching you so you must always be on guard. A trip back to the beach can be around the next corner or over the next hill.