Operation Backlog Completion 2026

My Top 5 Most-Anticipated Games of 2020

 Video games  7 Responses »  Tagged with:
Jan 012020
 

2020 is here! Yesterday I talked about the best games I played last year, and now I’m ready to look ahead to the new games coming in the year ahead!

Honorable Mention

We don’t often get an honorable mention here, but Kingdom Hearts III’s Re:Mind DLC is due out on January 23, and I can’t wait. DLC doesn’t count as a game release, though, so it doesn’t officially belong on this list.

With that out of the way, then, let’s move on to the five games I’m most looking forward to in 2020!

5. Resident Evil 3 (2020)

I debated for quite a while if I should put the Resident Evil 3 remake on the list or not. I loved RE2make, and it left me with high hopes for RE3make… but I can’t entirely shake my skepticism over Capcom mentioning in interviews that Resident Evil 3 will have more action than Resident Evil 2.

Still, though, they’re right. The original Resident Evil 3 did have more action than the original Resident Evil 2. Jill was able to dodge attacks, for example. So I’m willing to give Capcom the benefit of the doubt here and say the Resident Evil 3 remake will be a good survival horror game like its predecessor.

They didn’t let us down with Resident Evil 2, so I’m cautiously hopeful for Resident Evil 3.

4. Tales of Arise

With how little we’ve seen of Tales of Arise, it’s strange to think it’s coming out this year. There have been a lot of questions surrounding Arise, with fans jumping to conclusions about just how different it might be from previous games in the series.

I’m looking forward to seeing more from Tales of Arise and then playing it when it comes out. I enjoyed Tales of Berseria quite a bit, so here’s hoping this is another great entry.

In the meantime, there are plenty of Tales games I still need to play while I wait (including Tales of Vesperia, which I had on last year’s list).

3. Yakuza Remastered Collection

Does this count? Of course it does! Last year, the remastered versions of Yakuza 3, 4, and 5 were announced for the west as the Yakuza Remastered Collection. It’s already available digitally, with Yakuza 3 and Yakuza 4 already available and Yakuza 5 coming in February.

And when Yakuza 5 becomes available, so will the physical copy of the Yakuza Remastered Collection, which I pre-ordered pretty much the minute it appeared on Amazon.

Right now, I’m playing through Yakuza Kiwami 2, so there’s a good chance I’ll be all ready to dive into Yakzua 3 when my physical Yakuza Remastered Collection arrives.

2. Psychonauts 2

I can hardly believe I can actually put this on the list, but Psychonauts 2 is actually coming out this year!

Psychonauts is one of my favorite games. When Psychonauts 2 was finally announced, I was thrilled. I backed it on Fig right away. After a while, I started to get nervous about whether or not it could really live up to the first game, but the new trailer and gameplay shown at E3 got me excited again.

So far, it looks like everything I wanted from a Psychonauts sequel, and I have high hopes for it.

Speaking of games where I’ve gone back and forth in terms of excitement before settling on yes, I’m extremely excited for this game…

1. Final Fantasy VII Remake

Everyone probably saw this coming: my most-anticipated game of 2020 is the Final Fantasy VII Remake. Yes, I was initially hoping it would be turn-based, but I like the compromises they made with the pause system and Classic Mode. Yes, Midgar was my least favorite part of the original, but I’m interested to see how they’ll flesh out the city to turn this section into a full game.

(Let’s face it, I’m hoping for Yakuza Midgar , but even if it’s not quite that, it still has the potential to be pretty interesting.)

Everything I’ve seen from the Final Fantasy VII Remake since E3 has only made me want it more, and it’s hard to believe it’s only a little over two months away. Now if they’d just release that leaked demo already…

Conclusion

We already have a lot of great games slated for 2020, and these are the five at the top of my list: the Final Fantasy VII Remake and Psychonauts 2 first and foremost, then the Yakuza Remastered Collection, Tales of Arise, and the Resident Evil 3 remake, plus Kingdom Hearts III’s DLC as an honorable mention.

And with Re:Mind coming out on January 23, Yakuza on February 11, Final Fantasy VII on March 3, and Resident Evil 3 on April 3, the early part of the year is already packed!

What games are you looking forward to the most in 2020?

Top 5 Games I Played in 2019

 Video games  5 Responses »  Tagged with:
Dec 312019
 

2019 is coming to a close, and I played a lot of excellent games this year.

Things turned out pretty great for my most-anticipated games of the year, too, without a repeat of last year’s disasters.

So it’s time to talk about the best games I played in 2019.

Honorable Mentions

There are three honorable mentions I want to discuss this year. First, God of War (2018). I know it was an honorable mention last year too, but since I completed it in the first week of January, it doesn’t feel like I really played it this year. But regardless of when I played it, it was great.

Next, Fire Emblem: Three Houses. I got into the Fire Emblem series for the first time this year, and Three Houses is a fantastic game. It’s also a long game, and although I’ve done one route, I don’t consider my playthrough over yet.

Finally, I had high hopes that Control might make this list, since I was really enjoying it… until I glitched my game so completely, I need to start over from the beginning. Oh. Disheartened by the progress I’d have to repeat, I haven’t done that yet.

Now let’s move on to the top 5 games I played this year.

5. A Hat in Time

Is it possible? Did I actually finally play A Hat in Time after blogging about it incessantly and then leaving it to drown in my backlog? Yes I did!

I finished A Hat in Time today, so you can expect a full review coming sometime next week. I was torn about whether or not it deserved the fifth spot on this list – in fact, I had the entire list written up with Golf Story in this spot before I decided A Hat in Time should be here instead.

When I backed A Hat in Time on Kickstarter, I was hoping for a particular style of 3D platformer, and I got it. Several things changed from those early builds, and I wish we could have seen the dual-timeline story they had planned at one point, but overall I really enjoyed A Hat in Time.

4. Nier

You know what else I didn’t expect to like as much as I did? Nier. That’s partly because I didn’t know much of what to expect at all.

As I explained in my review, while I found Nier to be a sad game, I really liked the cast of characters and it had a lot more humor than I thought it would. I even went for all four endings despite not originally planning to.

The banter between Nier and Weiss is one of the things that pushed it high enough to end up on this list, and I want a grumpy snarky book accompanying me on all of my depressing journeys from now on, thank you.

(I have Automata in progress now, so who knows? It could end up on next year’s list.)

3. Resident Evil 2 (2019)

It’s hard to express how happy I was when I realized the Resident Evil 2 remake was a true survival horror remake of the original just like I’d hoped it would be. Playing the Resident Evil 2 remake filled me with nostalgia, some good (seeing the locked doors in the main hall) and some not-so-good (walking down a hallway where I remembered Lickers killing me repeatedly in the original), and it’s an excellent game in its own right.

(It also left me really excited to see what they do with Resident Evil 3’s remake.)

While it might not be a perfect game, and there are some things I prefer in the original, it’s a fantastic return to survival horror and almost everything I hoped for when the Resident Evil 2 remake was announced.

2. Judgment

I wanted Judgment from the moment it was announced. Now I already want a sequel, even though I’m not sure a sequel’s story could top what they did here. Judgment is phenomenal, and it might have my favorite story of any game I’ve played this year. I loved the characters, the plot, and… well, most of the side content…

Deciding whether Judgment deserved the first or second spot on this list wasn’t easy. I loved it so much, I considered the possibility that it was my favorite game of the year.

But every time I started to lean that way, I remembered the Keihin Gang. Not only was that the worst part of Judgment for me, it’s also probably the one thing keeping it from being my game of the year.

So although Judgment has my favorite game story of the year, I ultimately gave the top spot to the game I enjoyed playing all the way through…

1. Kingdom Hearts III

Of course, it’s Kingdom Hearts III.

Some people found Kingdom Hearts III to be a disappointment, but I didn’t at all. I enjoyed every minute I spent playing it. The story did everything I hoped it would – and even went beyond my wildest hopes in regards to one of my favorite characters – and set up exciting hooks for the next saga, the worlds were huge and fun to explore, and I even had fun with the Gummi Ship for the first time in the series.

More than any other game on this list, even my beloved Judgment, I simply had fun playing Kingdom Hearts III pretty much the entire time from start to finish.

Conclusion

That’s it for 2019. While I played a ton of wonderful games this year, Kingdom Hearts III, Judgment, Resident Evil 2, Nier, and A Hat in Time rose above the rest to be the top games I played in 2019.

What about you? What are the best games you played this year?

2019 Writing Goal Progress

 Writing  No Responses »  Tagged with:
Dec 302019
 

Once again, I set certain writing goals for myself at the start of the year.

Now that 2019 is almost over, it’s time to take a look back at those goals and see how I did.

While I never set specific goals related to publication, since that’s something I don’t have control over outside of self-published stories, 2019 saw the publication of my first pulp fiction story, “The Domino Lady Takes the Case,” as part of Airship 27’s Domino Lady Volume 3 collection.

It was also a notable year for me as a game writer, with the release of Parachronism: Order of Chaos (the first game I was ever hired to work on), Two Till Midnight (a horror game I wrote lore and backstory notes for), and Not It (the result of an exciting Halloween visual novel jam).

Those were some good achievements, but what about my writing goals? Let’s take a look at that list from the start of the year…

  • Complete my final edits of A Prince’s Price and send it to a beta reader.
  • Edit The Nightbringer based on feedback I recently received.
  • Edit A Prince’s Price based on the feedback I receive.
  • Once they are completely edited, search for an agent for The Nightbringer and A Prince’s Price.

I met these four goals. Both A Prince’s Price and The Nightbringer have been read and revised, and they’re now in the list of manuscripts I’ve been sending out query letters for. No luck yet, but here’s hoping.

  • Edit The Sunken Sapphire.

This is the first goal I missed. I haven’t touched The Sunken Sapphire since I finished the rough draft last year. I more or less switched it out for a different goal, which we’ll get to next.

  • Create an outline for the revisions of either The Threshing Night or Mage’s Test.

Not only did I create an outline of revisions for one of these novels, I did it for both of them. Then I revised The Threshing Night according to my new outline of revisions (they’re both disasters, but I decided it was the less disastrous of the two). It still needs work, but it’s in a lot better condition than when I started.

So effectively, revising The Threshing Night replaced revising The Sunken Sapphire. I hadn’t intended to go beyond the outline of revisions, but once I started thinking about how to fix it, I wanted to give it a try instead of setting it aside again.

  • Write at least 3 more short stories.

I met and exceeded this goal! I wrote two more pulp fiction stories, to follow this year’s publication of “The Domino Lady Takes the Case,” and two new horror stories. I also pulled out an old rough draft of a science fiction story, revised it, and submitted it to an anthology.

Here’s hoping for good news in regards to all of these stories in 2020!

  • Continue to manage my two side websites and get them to a level where they do bring in income.

My side websites did bring in a fraction of what could be considered “income,” but I would consider this goal to be a failure – not just because of the tiny amount of income, but because I stopped consistently managing them. This is something I definitely want to work on next year.

  • Add an additional “event” of some sort to the three book signings I currently participate in.

While I didn’t attend an additional book signing event this year, I did find two more that I could possibly add to my list. I’ll consider this goal partly-completed.

All in all, it was a pretty good year. I didn’t meet every goal, but I did accomplish the major ones. What about you? If you set goals for yourself at the start of the year, how did you do?

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