Completionist 2014: STEAM SUMMER SALE APOCALYPSE

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.... But also, YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS! Its the most wonderful/financially painful time of the year. Well, outside Christmas. Well. Here's the damage.

• Metal Gear Rising: REVENGENCE
• Prison Architect
• Sniper Elite V3 (Pre-order. What? I fucking love this series.)
• Tiny and Big: Grandpa's Leftovers
• Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 (Gift from Wier)
• Marlow Briggs
• Banished
• Battleblock Theater
• Planetary Annihilation
• Spelunky
• Spec Ops The Line
• Rising Storm
• Insurgency
• Goat Simulator
• Transistor
• Skullgirls (Another Gift from Wier)
• Mercenary Kings
• Space Engineers

Oh... Oh god. What have I done?

SCORE - 18;

>SCORE = -42

Completionist 2014: E3 Digital Ticket Humble Bundle

Little late on this one. Soooo I bought the Humble bundle's E3 Digital Ticket. My reasoning? Uhhh.. It was the Company of Heroes 2 DLC Pack.... Yeah... But it was really cheap for Mortal Kombat so what the hell. Why not?

• Anomaly 2
• Sid Meier's Civilization III: Complete
• MX vs ATV Reflex
• Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection

Boy. There's a few things in there that I'm not gonna be playing. *Cough cough MX vs ATV* Ahh well. Whatcha gonna do?

SCORE - 4;

>SCORE = -24

Well. There went all that goddamn progress.

Completionist 2014: Nation Red

Another one for the books. Gonna try to keep this brief, I'm kinda noticing I'm going into full review mode sometimes.

Nation Red was a game I got from a friend many Steam Sales ago. Speaking of which, SUMMER SALE! YEAHHHH!! Erhm. Anyway, I finally beat the campaign missions for this game. It was pretty short, but the true power of this game is to play it with a bunch of friends. But meh, a wins a win.

Nation Red is a top down Smash TV style shooter. You can definitely tell that this game was riding the Zombie Wave thing. Is that done yet? Is it? I think I saw dinosaurs or some shit was the next hotness. ANYWHO, you kill zombies. They drop power ups and weapons. Power ups can range from match long passives to temporary buffs. There's a good number of weapons that can also drop. They let you take your pick by letting you keep one ranged and one melee weapon. Melee has a lot more risk, but the damage difference is significant. Personally, I liked using the melee weapons on non-melee bosses like the Minigun zombie or the Grenade zombie.

There is also a level up system for killing zombies and Boss zombies. The levels do not transfer and they are restricted per match. Leveling up allows you to pick from 7(? I think it was 7) different passive abilities (Perks). In single player, you can press "Space Bar" and it will pause time so you can take a look at what each perk does. I can't remember, but I believe you don't get the chance to stop time in the multiplayer versions. I could be wrong, I haven't actually played the COOP since 2012. The perks listed per levelup are randomly generated, and they do have some interesting effects. It feels like you could actually combo certain perks to create a particular play-style for yourself. Personally, I just had a priority system that went something like this.

1. Auto-kill perks (Hand of God, Seekers, Pulse Wave, etc.)
2. Auto-EXP buff (Only if its early in the round)
3. Reload buffs
4. Damage buffs
5. Health Regen
6. Grenade generator
7. If it gets this far, I got a shit set of perks. Pick whatever looks fun

All-in-all, I really liked their level up system. It made for some interesting combinations and there were occasions where the right fun perk showed up at the right time. I enjoyed Nation Red a lot. Campaign was a little short, but that's really not what the game was meant for. OH WELL!

SCORE++;

>SCORE = -20

God. Steam sale is on. Guessing this score will be going down a lot.

Completionist 2014: Breach & Clear

This was a fun game. I picked it up as part of the Humble Android Bundle 10. Brach & Clear originally was released as a mobile title that was ported over to the PC. It was more fun than I had bargained for.

Breach & Clear's gameplay is a turn-based tactical RPG. You command a squad of 4 special force soldiers. At the start, you are able to pick from one of the many different Special Forces units from around the world. Each with their own different specialties and boosts to stats. If anything, it only provides a temporary boost, because leveling up allows you to quickly make up for whatever stats you are lacking. Each unit in your force is assigned a special role that provides them with abilities or passive attributes.

The game plays out with a planning phase and an action phase. As the name implies, the planning phase, you assign the actions your troops will perform during the action phase. You are given control of the direction and their facing in every step of the action phase. This can lead to some very interesting and complex movements. However after doing it 10+ times per soldier per map, you get a little tired of planning and simplify the movements for speed. Once the planning phase is completed, the action phase executes the movements of both your and the computers planned movements. I enjoy this style of execution of planned tactics a little more than the turn by turn actions of other tactical RPG's. The executions felt organic and my troops were, for the most part, competent.

Probably my biggest gripe with Breach & Clear is the weapon balancing. It felt like there was no real reason to use anything other than an Assault Rifle. Shotguns required you to be prohibitively close, and I felt like you soldier didn't fire nearly as many rounds as they should have with the shotgun. LMG's were abysmally under-powered. LMGs would fire more rounds, inaccurately, and do less damage. The idea was for them to have a "suppression effect" which didn't really do anything. Sniper rifles do a fair bit of damage from a greater distance. However, it appeared as though my snipers would only fire once every other turn. Assault rifles would put down multiple rounds, accurately, and do a good amount of damage.

ANYWAY. Game beat. Score goes down. Yay!

SCORE++;
>SCORE = -21;

Completionist 2014: Half-Minute Hero: Super Mega Neo Climax Ultimate Boy

Time to write out how I beat this game in Half a minute. And I'm typing as fast as I can, but I really shouldn't be wasting my precious seconds trying to type all this out. Goddamnit why can't I stop doing that. Forget punctuation *BOOM*

So I beat this game. THE WHOLE GAME. That includes all of the DLC portions and the ridiculously hard Hero 3 mode. It was so stupid hard, I had to make a video for it. Enjoy!

SCORE++;
>SCORE = -22

Completionist 2014: Risk of Rain

Awww yis! Another game in the books. Risk of Rain was a very fun title. I picked it up when it came out and I never really got into it. It is an awesome coop game with some very interesting level progression. For every game session, the longer you take, the more difficult the game becomes. But at the same time, you can't just power through the levels, because you need to look around for items to help you power up so you can handle tougher and more plentiful enemies.

Every map has a portal you need to find and activate. Enemies randomly spawn around you and at increasing intervals. The general strategy is to fight through them, but don't waste your time trying to kill every last one of them before you find the portal. They'll keep spawning infinitely till you do. When you find the portal, it usually spawns a boss type monster. You will then have to survive for 90 seconds. During this time, the boss will most likely try to kill you and more enemies will be spawning all around you. After you survive the ordeal, you then have to kill all remaining enemies on the map to progress to the next level. Usually during this time, it would be best to purchase any power-ups that you can find on the map.

The portal prior to the final level provides you with an awesome decision. You can either progress to the final level, with what you have. Or you can teleport back to the beginning and grind up more levels and gear to better prepare you for the final level. This allows you to grind up levels and gear to better prepare you for the final boss. During this time, the games difficulty level will still be increasing. Ideally, you'd like to have so much gear and so many items that even at the game's peak difficulty, you're able to slog your way through any obstacle. Or you can try to blitz your way past with what you got while the difficulty is not nearly as hard.

I was lucky enough to have the company of Fij's friend Stookie(Stukey? Steucie?) to guide me along. I had not unlocked anything in the game prior to playing a round with him. But with the default character and some good spawns, we were both able to make it to the end of the game. Risk of Rain was a part of the Humble Coop bundle, and it really does shine with others. I loved it and would definitely recommend playing with someone, either local or online. And a controller does make the experience much more enjoyable.

SCORE ++;
>SCORE = -23